In recent days, Vitalik Buterin has highlighted several risks of “overloading” the Ethereum consensus. We take a look back at some of them, which deserve to be considered in the development of the blockchain
Vitalik Buterin calls for Ethereum consensus not to be overloaded
In his latest blog post, Vitalik Buterin pointed out the risks of overexploiting the Ethereum (ETH) consensus. By this he means attributing more and more functionality and responsibility to the protocol:
Don’t overload Ethereum’s consensus:https://t.co/07tzyCrZcJ
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 21, 2023
A number of areas are being developed, including the idea of using Ethereum’s security layer. This is the case, for example, with layer 2s such as Optimism, Arbitrum and ZKSync, which communicate constantly with layer 1.
This concept can also be extended to re-staking, in the event that another blockchain requests Ethereum’s validators. He uses the hypothetical example of Dogecoin switching to Proof-of-Stake, which would call on these validators to complete the network’s security.
In reality, these practices have a limited risk in technical terms, but the danger actually lies in the “social consensus”. In other words, in the event of a major problem, the community of projects concerned could expect Ethereum to be hard forked to resolve their own difficulties.
Apart from the philosophical debate about whether or not a hard fork is legitimate in order to “turn back the clock”, such expectations would place too great a responsibility on Ethereum. This is why Vitalik Buterin believes that these solutions should be designed to limit the damage to the said projects, and not create porosities with Ethereum :
“If you design a protocol where, even if everything breaks completely, the losses are contained for the validators and the users who have chosen to participate and use your protocol, that presents a low risk. “
Integrating real-world data via validators
Another concept that is technically feasible, but on which Vitalik Buterin warns, is oracles integrated directly into validators.
Quite simply, this would make it possible to integrate real-world data from the consensus, for example ETH/USD, ETH/EUR, ETH/CNY prices, etc. But the danger in doing this is that Ethereum would no longer be just “a neutral technical platform”, but could be seen as “a financial tool”, greatly increasing the regulatory attack surface.
By injecting too many real-world dependent elements into the heart of Ethereum’s consensus, it increases the systemic risks to the protocol:
” The “purity” of a blockchain, in the sense that it is a purely mathematical construct that tries to reach consensus only on purely mathematical things, is a huge advantage. As soon as a blockchain tries to ‘hang on’ to the outside world, the conflicts in the outside world also start to have an impact on the blockchain. “
These are just some of the points made by the founder of Ethereum, which are worth considering before the blockchain takes off further. For example, he warned against actions that would tend to increase the scope of consensus on subjects other than respect for the fundamental rules of the protocol.
