- Projects to be evaluated on contribution to societal benefits and Ethereum community, enhancing financial inclusion.
- Buterin emphasizes the importance of Ethereum maintaining neutrality to prevent influence-based alignment biases.
Vitalik Buterin, recently proposed developing a set of metrics to assess how closely projects align with Ethereum’s foundational values. In a blog post dated September 28, Buterin outlined the necessity of ensuring that diverse projects contribute to a unified Ethereum ecosystem rather than existing as disparate entities.
Making Ethereum alignment legiblehttps://t.co/Ydwox0c01i
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 28, 2024
Buterin introduced several metrics to evaluate the alignment of projects within the Ethereum framework. The first metric considers the openness of a project’s source code. Open-source projects allow for broader verification and modification, which can enhance security and prevent dependency on proprietary systems.
“The primary challenge is making sure that all these projects are, collectively, building something that feels like one Ethereum ecosystem, and not 138 incompatible fiefdoms.”
Interoperability is another proposed metric, suggesting that projects should be evaluated based on their compatibility with various Ethereum standards, such as Ethereum Request for Comments (ERC) tokens. This compatibility is crucial for seamless interaction within the Ethereum platform.
Possible rule of thumb: when you make an ERC, have multiple teams involved from the start. I thought @hal2001 @Uniswap did well on this with ERC-7683.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 28, 2024
Additionally, Buterin suggested implementing “walkaway” and “insider attack” tests to measure a project’s decentralization and security. These tests examine whether a project can continue to operate independently of its initial development team and assess the potential damage if the internal team attempts to undermine the system.
Projects might also be assessed on their societal impact, particularly their contribution to the Ethereum community and broader societal benefits, like promoting financial inclusion or supporting new public funding methods.
The discussion of Ethereum’s reliance on Buterin’s leadership was highlighted by Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, in a recent interview. Hoskinson noted the potential risks associated with Ethereum’s dependency on a single individual for strategic direction and inspiration.
“If you were to remove him from the equation right now, what’s the next hard fork going to look like, and how quickly can they actually get there?”
Buterin’s initiative aims to foster a robust, cohesive ecosystem that supports Ethereum’s long-term viability and independence.
Yeah, agree. I feel like for rollup decentralization it's actually pretty well formalized. I want to see us raise the level of formalism for all the other axes I mentioned (eg. what site do you even check to see how "aligned" a wallet is?)
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 28, 2024
This approach seeks to ensure that Ethereum remains a leading platform for decentralized applications, capable of adapting and thriving independently of any single leader’s influence.
The current price of Ethereum (ETH) is 2,642.3 USD, showing a slight decline of -0.61% in the last 24 hours. The 24-hour trading volume is 13.67 billion USD, and its market capitalization is 318.05 billion USD.
The current Relative Strength Index (RSI) for Ethereum (ETH) stands at 56.9, indicating a neutral position. This suggests that ETH is neither overbought nor oversold at this point, meaning the market is relatively balanced. A value of 70 or above would signal that ETH is overbought, while a value of 30 or below would indicate it is oversold.
