Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned against “overloading” Ethereum’s social consensus, which, if discouraged or resisted, could lead to “high systemic risks for the ecosystem.”
While acknowledging the “natural impulse” of trying to extend the core functionality of the Ethereum blockchain, Buterin added that such actions could end up making the consensus layer more fragile.
Risks of Overloading the Consensus Layer
Over the years, several proposals have emerged suggesting the use of Ethereum’s social consensus for other purposes, including price and data oracles, lead recovery, and the use of layer 1 soft forks to recover layer 1 projects. 2. The Ethereum co-founder, however, cautioned against such a notion, explaining:
“It is natural for application layer projects to attempt such a strategy, and in fact such ideas are often simply conceived without an appreciation of the risks, but their outcome can become very misaligned with the goals of the community at hand. set”.
in the last blog mail Titled, ‘Don’t overload the Ethereum consensus,’ Buterin offered some potential solutions to address risks such as price oracles, either “decentralized not quite cryptoeconomic oracles” or oracles based on validator voting that compromise. explicitly that their emergency recovery strategies are more than just appealing to the L1 consensus.
Buterin also noted that more complex truth oracles could count as a solution, since the focus would be on reporting more subjective facts than price. He added that it would be “sort of a decentralized court system” built on top of a not-quite-crypto DAO.
It is also important to minimize reliance on cross-chain bridging, as these protocols have become an attractive target for malicious entities.
minimalism
Buterin said that any expansion of Ethereum’s consensus “shoulds” triggers an increase in the costs, complexities and risks of running a validator. He argued that preserving the minimalism of the chain should be the approach that can be achieved by supporting uses of re-staking that do not appear to be slippery slopes to extend the role of Ethereum consensus.
He also highlighted the importance of helping developers find alternative strategies to achieve their security goals.
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