Vitalik Buterin's 'Degen Communism' and his vision to reduce Ethereum technical debt

ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spent April Fools' Day writing serious and funny content on the ethereum website and his personal blog. In both positions, he advocated for protocol simplifications and efficiency improvements while exploring thought-provoking ideas about the future of political and economic systems in an increasingly digital world.

In its ethereum.org/@vbuterin/purge_2024_03_31″>more serious post, Buterin detailed the latest hard fork, Dencun, which introduced a series of protocol simplifications as part of the ethereum roadmap section called “The Purge.” This effort aims to optimize the ethereum codebase, reduce technical debt, and improve the platform's overall performance. Notable changes include reducing the functionality of the SELFDESTRUCT opcode, introducing a limited storage window for blobs, and possibly removing rarely used precompiles.

These simplifications are expected to make ethereum client development and infrastructure construction simpler, paving the way for greater decentralization and efficiency. Buterin highlighted other examples of “purge” efforts, such as the Geth client that stopped supporting pre-merger proof-of-work networks and an EIP that eliminated the need to handle “empty accounts.” Additionally, the Dencun hard fork introduced an 18-day storage window for blobs, significantly reducing storage requirements for ethereum nodes.

Another area that is being sought to simplify is precompiles, which are ethereum contracts implemented directly by clients. As Buterin noted, prebuilds like RIPEMD-160, Identity, BLAKE2, and MODEXP have rarely been used to generate bugs and consensus challenges for new EVM implementations. The ethereum community is considering removing these precompiles entirely or replacing them with equivalent EVM code.

EIP-4444, which removes the requirement for each ethereum node to store all historical blocks indefinitely, will significantly increase the decentralization of the network's nodes. Under this proposal, entities such as block explorers will store the entire history, while peer-to-peer protocols can be used to store and distribute historical data more efficiently.

Buterin also discussed a LOG reform proposal to remove bloom filters and simplify the LOG opcode. This change would pave the way for separate protocols that use zero-knowledge proofs and incrementally verifiable calculations to generate provably correct “record trees” for applications requiring decentralized access to records.

ethereum's execution layer is also scheduled to transition from the RLP and Merkle Patricia tree formats to the more efficient SimpleSerialize (SSZ) format that the consensus layer already employs. This change will streamline ethereum's cryptographic data structures, which could lead to a single SNARK-compatible hash binary Merkle tree in the long term.

April Fool's Day, food for thought by Vitalik

While these technical improvements are crucial to ethereum's long-term success, Buterin has also been exploring less conventional ideas about the future of society in the digital age. In a thought-provoking April 1 post titled “eth.limo/general/2024/04/01/dc.html”>Degen Communism: the only correct political ideology”, Buterin proposed a new ideology that embraces chaos and risk-taking on the Internet while aligning incentives with the common good.

While the post is undoubtedly an April Fool's Day joke on the surface, it raises some interesting questions about the future of political and economic systems in an increasingly digital and decentralized world.

Central to this concept is the idea of ​​“chaos with a purpose,” which suggests that rather than suppressing the volatility and unpredictability of markets and social media, we should harness these forces to drive innovation and progress. Buterin proposes several mechanisms to redirect the benefits of this chaos toward public goods and protect vulnerable people from its disadvantages.

Although “degen communism” is far from a fully developed political ideology and does not claim to be taken entirely seriously, it highlights the need for innovative thinking to address the complex social and economic issues of the 21st century. By embracing change and experimentation while prioritizing equity and social well-being, we can be better equipped to meet the challenges and opportunities of the digital age.

As ethereum evolves, Buterin's vision for the platform and the broader digital landscape demonstrates a commitment to both technical excellence and social responsibility. Ongoing efforts to simplify and improve the ethereum protocol, combined with thought-provoking ideas about the future of society, show the potential of blockchain technology to drive positive change on multiple fronts.

While some of the ideas proposed in Buterin's April Fools' article, such as Harberger taxes on intellectual property and “proof of stake” schemes for immigration, may seem radical or impractical, they serve as a reminder that addressing the challenges of this century will require bold and innovative thinking. As the ethereum community works to build a more efficient, secure and decentralized platform, it is essential to consider the broader implications of these technological advances and their potential to shape the future of society.

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