Ethereum Foundation’s internal and external troubles: Researchers and engineers confront each other

Author: 0xNatalie Source: ChainFeeds

Recently, the views and actions of some members of the Ethereum Foundation have been caught up in controversy. First, on May 16, Péter Szilágyi, head of Geth development and a member of the Ethereum Foundation, posted his views on some current solutions to Ethereum problems on Twitter. He believes that some current solutions do not fundamentally solve the problem, but rather democratize the problem and eliminate protests through the distribution of benefits. This view has sparked heated discussions, especially with the views of Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and the two sides have engaged in a heated debate.

Next, today, May 21, Dankrad Feist announced that he and Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, would become advisors to Eigenlayer and receive millions of dollars in token incentives, which once again aroused doubts and discussions in the community. As members of the Ethereum Foundation, they participated in external projects that have potential conflicts of interest with Ethereum and accepted project token incentives, which inevitably made the community doubt their positions and neutrality of views.

Confrontation between researchers and engineers

Handling of MEV issues

Péter Szilágyi is a core member of the Ethereum Foundation and the head of development of Geth, the most important execution client of Ethereum. Dankrad Feist is also a researcher and core member of the Ethereum Foundation, and Danksharding is named after Dankrad Feist.

One of the focal points of the debate between Peter and Dankrad Feist was the issue of MEV. Peter criticized the current approach to solving the MEV problem. Peter believes that MEV was originally an attack on Ethereum, but by sharing the benefits with enough stakeholders, the problem is seen as solved. The Ethereum ecosystem has shifted to the traditional financial system, eliminating protests against MEV by distributing benefits to some specific groups. He is worried that this approach will lead to Ethereum becoming more centralized.

Dankrad Feist believes that it is not easy to solve the MEV problem. MEV is a fact that cannot be completely eliminated because it is an inevitable product of useful and valuable protocols on the chain. He specifically mentioned why the development of MEV-Boost was promoted: before the merger (the Merge), a more balanced mechanism is needed to deal with MEV in order not to harm the interests of independent stakers. Without a flexible solution for liquidity staking, large staking pools will receive higher returns than independent stakers, which may force independent stakers to exit. Until there is a better solution, rather than delaying the merger or "destroying" independent stakers, it is better to promote the development of MEV-Boost.

State Growth Issue

In addition to the MEV issue, they also debated the topic of state growth. With the increase in transactions and smart contracts on Ethereum, the state of the network (that is, the information of all accounts and the current data of smart contracts) is also expanding rapidly. This brings challenges in storage and processing. Currently, stateless verification is a solution that aims to reduce the amount of data that nodes need to store and make node operations more efficient. With stateless technology, nodes do not need to hold the complete network state, but dynamically obtain the necessary state information to verify transactions and blocks in some way.

Peter criticized this approach for the centralization of state control, because only a few large nodes can store the complete state. Such a centralization trend may lead to the concentration of power and benefits in the hands of a few large participants. Node operators lose control of their own data and must rely on authority to obtain information such as balances.

Dankrad Feist thought Peter's criticism sounded like he felt that the protocol was designed to satisfy monetary interests rather than to establish a fair system. The stateless solution improves user experience and network performance. This is a necessary technological advancement, not for commercial interests. The main purpose of the stateless proposal is to reduce the cost and technical threshold of running a full node, so that more people can participate in the Ethereum network.

Interlude: Problems in the Ethereum Development Process

I thought the discussion was over, but a day later, on the 17th, Peter and Dankrad Feist had another debate on how to deal with competition in the Ethereum development process.

Peter criticized the Ethereum development team for rushing to fix problems in response to competitors such as Solana, abandoning the due development process and prudence. He believes that the development team is driven by fear of competitors and is eager to launch solutions instead of going through reasonable development processes and careful review. For example, in order to prevent users from losing to other platforms such as Solana or Bitcoin, the EIP-4844 proposal was rushed without sufficient process and review.

Dankrad Feist refuted Peter's criticism of "rushed" development, emphasizing that it took two years from the EIP-4844 proposal to be launched on the mainnet from February 2022. He pointed out that Ethereum's development process is carefully planned and reviewed, and is progressing normally according to the data availability roadmap. He believes that it is unreasonable to call it "rushed."

Peter and Dankrad Feist's series of disputes reflect the disagreement in the Ethereum community on the direction of protocol development. Although both insist on the commitment to decentralization, there are differences in the choice of solutions they implement. The direction of the solution often has a lot of impact on the evolution of Ethereum. As Vitalik said: "While there are many paths toward building a scalable and secure long-term blockchain ecosystem, it's looking like they are all building toward very similar futures." In this evolving ecosystem, finding the best solution will be a long and complex process.

As an EigenLayer consultant, can you take into account the interests of Ethereum?

Another discussion related to members of the Ethereum Foundation is that Dankrad Feist and Justin Drake announced on Twitter that they would become consultants for the Eigenlayer project in the past week, which triggered community incentive discussions.

EigenLayer is a leading project in the Ethereum ecosystem with heavy pledges. Two members of the Ethereum Foundation have received millions of dollars in token incentives as project consultants. How to deal with the conflict of interest between Ethereum and Eigenlayer while maintaining neutrality?

Dankrad Feist disclosed that he received a large number of tokens as incentives from this position. However, the role of consultant is personal and does not represent the Ethereum Foundation, so it is entirely possible to disagree with Eigenlayer. Dankrad Feist mentioned a series of problems with the current re-staking mechanism, including potential centralization risks, attacks on the Ethereum protocol, and misalignment of interests between token holders and stakers. But he believes that if the re-staking mechanism is implemented effectively, it can also bring benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem, such as bringing some of the benefits of LST to independent stakers, and providing a temporary solution for projects that are resource-constrained by the Ethereum network. One of the main goals of being an advisor is to help avoid the centralization risks and potential attacks on the Ethereum protocol brought by re-staking services.

Justin Drake also explained in his disclosure that he received millions of dollars in token incentives as an Eigenlayer advisor, which is more than the sum of all other assets. He promised to use all advisory income for valuable projects within the Ethereum ecosystem and was ready to end his advisory position at any time if EigenLayer took a direction that was contrary to the interests of Ethereum. Justin Drake said that his default public position would continue to maintain a tendency to criticize Eigenlayer. He is worried that the re-staking mechanism may lead to a decrease in the number of independent validators, which will have a negative impact on the decentralized nature of Ethereum. Therefore, we hope that by serving as an advisor, we can have a deeper understanding and guide the Eigenlayer project to avoid the risks brought by the heavy pledge mechanism.

For the disclosures of the two, the feedback from community members is very different. Regarding Dankrad Feist's decision to become an advisor, the community expressed dissatisfaction and doubts: "Do you really think that receiving huge compensation from an organization with different incentives from Ethereum will not affect your decision?". As for Justin Drake's disclosure, although there are also doubts such as "As a core contributor to the Ethereum Foundation, what is he doing accepting a project role that conflicts with Ethereum's interests? Where is the credible neutrality?", the community generally accepts and congratulates him, believing that this disclosure is open and transparent and is a model for the industry.

The above attitudes are very different mainly because Justin Drake clearly stated that all the consultant income will be reused in the Ethereum ecosystem, which reflects his loyalty to Ethereum and his clear position. Although Dankrad Feist also stated his position, he did not promise actual action, which made the community dissatisfied.

Disputes often occur because of different interests. The community seems to be not optimistic about Dankrad Feist's views and actions, so which side do you support?