jakiro
Author: Terry, vernacular blockchain
As one of the areas where influence is fastest monetization, for ordinary retail investors in the Web3 world, whether they can pay attention to the tweets of various Alpha bloggers and KOLs in time has become an essential skill to track wealth passwords.
So who is the most influential “trade” king in the current crypto world?
Although the following KOL sales renderings may not be rigorous, it is accurate to place Vitalik Buterin in a unique position – as the absolute person in the pan-Ethereum ecosystem, Vitalik rarely directly “sells goods”, butEvery word and deed of “open cards” and “secret milk” will have a great boost to the market.
The recent surge in ENS due to Vitalik’s shouting is a typical example.Therefore, this article aims to take stock of the development and current situation of projects/technology directions that Vitalik has “bringed goods” in history, and try to summarize the reasons behind them and how they affect and shape the Ethereum we see today.
01“Preference” for ENS
It is no exaggeration to say that Vitalik is “preferred” to ENS.
He once publicly stated in an interview: “Ethereum domain name service ENS is by far the most successful non-financial Ethereum application.”
As we all know,The full name of ENS launched in 2017Ethereum Name Service, is a distributed domain name service based on Ethereum. Through its unique bidding mechanism, any user can register one (or more) Ethereum domain names ending with “.eth” for their Ethereum address through the bidding process..
Simply put, ENS can map “Ethereum address starting with 0x” that is long and difficult to remember in person to custom short addresses, such as satoshi.eth, vitalik.eth, etc., in this way, in wallets that support ENS, users no longer have to copy and paste long addresses. They can directly use the ENS domain name to bind various cryptocurrency addresses and receive payments for cryptocurrency.
Vitalik’s Twitter account nickname has always been “vitalik.eth”, which is equivalent to a long-term free advertisement for ENS, and it also indirectly shows his support for ENS.
Since the first half of this year, Vitalik has been directly in the process, and has publicly “bringing goods” several times, which has produced a strong stimulus to the price trend of ENS in the secondary market:
First, on January 3, Vitalik forwarded the ENS layer2 data resolution scheme and posted that “all L2s should run on the CCIP parser so that we can register, update and read the ENS subdomain directly on L2. ENSIt’s very important, it needs to be affordable,” then ENS once rose more than 30% in 5 minutes, breaking through 12 USDT.
On May 21, Vitalik and ENS once again staged a dramatic “support” drama – the reason was that Vitalik gave an example of his cross-L2 standards/basics in his discussion with others about the intention of sorters.The perspective of the facility, which emphasizes the “key changes in Token transfer, ENS, smart contract wallets (individuals and organizations)” these 3 points:
We need an open decentralized protocol to quickly transfer assets from one L2 to another L2 and integrate them into the wallet’s default sending page. The key changes to Token transfer, ENS, and smart contract wallets are all in L1It can be implemented simply on the page, but it is very difficult on L2. The light client, basic reliability and proof system is also more secure/decentralized on L1, which is far from enough on L2.
Overall, ENS has risen from $8 to a high of $30 since January 3, up nearly 300%.
02What else has Vitalik “yelled”?
In addition to ENS, Vitalik’s historically “bringing goods” can also make a long list of projects/technical directions.
-
Plasma
First of all, Plasma, as Vitalik once most highly praised Ethereum expansion solution, few people have mentioned it now, and even most new users have never heard of it.
In August 2017, Vitalik and Joseph Poon jointly released Plasma’s original idea – a set of off-chain expansion solutions.In essence, data and calculations (excluding deposits, withdrawals and Merkel) are separated from the Ethereum main chain and placed on the chain to execute.At the same time, some key operating status data are regularly stored on the main chain to ensure the ultimate security with the help of the Ethereum main chain.
However, since Plasma cannot solve the data withholding problem and is not conducive to migrating the contract status to L1, it was eventually replaced by a new route of Ethereum expansion represented by Rollup., Rollup, which is now as numerous as a river, has almost become the only mainstream option for Ethereum expansion.
However, it is worth noting that since Rollup relies heavily on data availability on the main chain, while Plasma completely bypassed the data availability problem and greatly reduced transaction fees, the popularity began to recover again. At the end of last year, Vitalik Buterin published “Exit games” one after anotherArticles such as EVM validiums: the return of Plasma,Think of Plasma as a way to improve chain scalability using proof of effectiveness such as zkSync and StarkNet.
This also makes everyone re-examine Plasma’s ability to minimize data availability restrictions, and it is expected that Plasma may play a significant role in improving Ethereum network performance in the future.
-
RAI
In the field of stablecoins, Vitalik has published a special article explaining his views on stablecoin design.And it is believed that it can basically be divided into three different categories: centralized stablecoins, real-world asset-backed stablecoins governed by DAO, and stablecoins supported by cryptocurrency-backed stablecoins with minimal governance.
The first two are represented by USDT/USDC and DAI respectively, while the third category specifically introduces the RAI model in detail, believing that RAI avoids all connections with the non-cryptocurrency financial system, making it more difficult to attack.
After that, Vitalik also expressed his belief that the rise of RAI can solve the problem of Lido leading the LSD ecosystem.It is believed that “radical governance of RAI may not need to go all the way, and it would be enough if the RAI community adopts more active governance to support staking ETH and intends to only accept non-dominant forms of staking ETH.”
However, as of the time of publication, on-chain data showed that the total supply of RAI was only 1.65 million, and its share in stablecoins was almost negligible.
-
SIWE, POAP, SBT
How should you prove yourself in the Web3 world?
Vitalik once said that ENS and others help build an ecosystem around identity because “blockchains are valuable for identity applications because they are institutionally independent”, and in addition to ENS, SIWE, POAP, and SBT are also regarded by Vitalik as key components for building on-chain identity systems:
The Sign In With Ethereum (SIWE) standard allows Web3 users to log in to (traditional) websites based on on-chain households;
POAP is used to issue tokens that represent proof;
Especially through the article “Decentralized Society: Finding the Soul of Web3”, Vitalik has gradually entered the field of vision of Token SBT in more people, and has become the actual carrier of Web3 digital identity – SBT can further prove the results while alsoIt can examine the traces on the chain, record the participation process, and also has the permanent and non-transferable Token attributes, which lays the foundation for building a one-to-one improvement of the Web3 identity system.
From this perspective, the soul-binding of the kernel of Token SBT is actually to establish a native Web3 identity system for every Web3 user in the Web3 world from scratch, so that Web3 can be expanded more widely to diversified new application scenarios based on this identity system, in addition to applications such as DeFi and NFT.
However, with the slump of the Web3 social trend, SBT is currently only a representative credential for decentralized identity and has not yet ushered in large-scale on-chain adoption.
-
DVT
On December 28, 2023, Vitalik published an article to explore how to handle a huge number of signature loads in the Ethereum network without sacrificing decentralization.The corresponding solution is mentioned, namely, using DVT (Distributed Verifier Technology) to build a decentralized staking pool.
Since DVT allows multiple nodes to act as an Ethereum PoS validator, it can significantly improve security and decentralization, and in November 2023, Lido actually began trialing DVT solutions to implement the so-called distributed validator network——Powered by Obol Network and SSV Network.
-
Loopring/Taiko
As one of the early representative projects of the Rollup program, Vitalik has publicly praised Loopring’s solutions many times, such as approving the Loopprint agreement in discussions on transaction performance., combined with sharding, the horizontal scaling solution divides the Ethereum network into thousands of “islands”, and the network transaction performance can theoretically reach 160,000 transactions per second.
Taiko, which has a deep relationship with Loopring and has just launched the main network, was also recognized by Vitalik not long ago——On May 25, Vitalik Buterin, as a block proposer, promoted the first block on Taiko mainnet, and said in the block:
“I’m excited to see Taiko launch as a Based Rollup platform, Ethereum benefits from L2s that adopt a variety of different approaches, and I appreciate that Taiko is the first to move in this direction” (I’m excited to see thatTaiko is launching as a based rollup. Ethereum benefits from L2s taking a plurality of different approaches, and I appreciate them being among the first to go in this direction).
-
Farcaster
In September 2023, Vitalik’s X account was hacked and released a free phishing link to collect ConsenSys about Proto Danksharding commemorating NFT, resulting in user losses of more than $690,000.
Vitalik then said on decentralized social media Farcaster that his Twitter account was indeed attacked by SIM card hijacking, possibly because of his mobile phone number being exposed when he registered Twitter Blue.It also said that he had uninstalled Twitter and joined Farcaster that can control account recovery through the Ethereum address.
As of the time of posting, Vitalik has indeed regarded Farcaster as its main social media base – more than 10 posts have been posted on Farcaster in the past week, but none of them on X, the latest one is June 11th.old post reply.
03The secret battle of “orthodox” of Ethereum behind the sale of goods
Back to the most core issue, as a super public figure with a pivotal influence on the pan-Ethereum ecosystem and even the entire Web3 world,What are the considerations behind Vitalik’s public “carrying goods”?
The reason is nothing else. To a large extent, it is for the purpose of maintaining Ethereum’s “orthodox” or ensuring that Ethereum’s development does not derail or stall, and is committed to planning an ideal future – Ethereum will further decentralize it.And implement the blueprint of Mass Adoption.
Just the ENS, Plasma, and Taiko mentioned above, we can clearly see a main line of maintaining the orthodoxy of Ethereum DA:
First of all, behind Vitaik’s active call for ENS L2 data analysis solution, it just requires that ENS services on each L2 network must adopt orthodox Ethereum DA, that is, DA must be placed on the Ethereum main network, so that L2 that chooses third-party DA platforms such as Celestia is excluded.
Since ENS is a key component of the Ethereum identity system, when the pan-Ethereum ecosystem realizes the influx of Mass Adoption traffic in the future, it is a non-financial application and infrastructure that L2 cannot ignore.
The establishment of the standard “If L2 wants to deploy ENS, it must place DA on the Ethereum main network” in advance further enhances the opportunity cost of L2 to choose a third-party DA, and has to carefully consider who has a higher overall cost.
Plasma’s intentions are undoubtedly more obvious—in the context of the DA war, it completely avoids data availability issues, can greatly reduce transaction fees (extended reading “Who is moving Ethereum’s “cheese”?Opportunities behind this main storyline in 2024》), especially combining Plasma with ZK zero-knowledge proof, just proves the effectiveness of Plasma blocks on the main chain, reducing dependence on the exit mechanism.
Finally, Taiko, as the first landing project of Based Rollup, the core highlight is to realize Rollup extension through L1 sorting.——Delegate sorting power (and derived sorting, MEV, etc. income) to L1, that is, all sorting and security are provided by Ethereum L1, thus further enhancing the economic attractiveness and competitiveness of the Ethereum main network.
Behind all public behaviors, there are legitimate or improper (private or public) interests, and Ethereum and Vitalik are no exception. As early as the third-party DA debate started by Celestia, the Vitalik struggle could be seen.Very experienced.
There is an interesting analogy in the article “On the Impact of Vitalik and Various Roadmaps on Ethereum Governance Process”, that is, Vitalik is actually playing the role of a substantial “CTO” in the Ethereum ecosystem to control the giant ship of Ethereum.Off-track:
Responsible for guiding the development process of Ethereum is in line with the planning direction of each “roadmap”, and even has the right to make a final decision on whether the development direction is in line with the Ethereum vision.(Whether he is willing to do so “arbitrary”).
From this perspective, no matter how you usually tease the difference between Vitalik and Satoshi Nakamoto as the two largest cryptocurrencies/ecology founders, at least Vitalik is a very qualified project founder – working hard to maintain the orthodoxy of Ethereum and always firmlyKeep a close eye on the Ethereum, the giant ship, moving in the appropriate direction he (and some key figures) believes, and will not derail or stall in the competition of the public chain.
04summary
Vitalik is a human, not a god. As long as you look at it from this perspective, you can clearly see the answers behind all questions.
For ordinary users, it is enough to remember that Vitalik’s various research on Ethereum often contains the possibility of leading new hot spots, and it is enough to be able to keenly smell the main battlefield of future capital struggles that may be hidden.
