Ethereumย (ETH) co- founder Vitalik Buterin has warned against โโoverloadingโ Ethereumโs social consensus โ which, if discouraged or resisted โ could attract โhigh systemic dangers to the ecosystem.โ
Althoughย while admitting the โnatural urgeโ to try to extend the Ethereumย (ETH) blockchainโs core functionality, Buterin alsoย mentionedย that such actions could end up making the consensus layer more fragile.
Risks of Overloading Consensus Layer
Over the years, plentyย of proposals have resurfaced suggesting the use of Ethereumย (ETH) social consensus for other objectives, including price and data oracles, re-staking initiatives, and using layer-1 soft forks to recover layer-2 projects. The Ethereumย (ETH) co- founder, onย theย otherย hand, warned against such a notion and explained,
โIt is natural for application-layer projects to attempt such a strategy, and indeed such ideas are often simply conceived without an appreciation of theย dangers, but its result can easily become very misaligned with the goals of the community as a whole.โ
In the latest blog post titled, โ Doย not overload Ethereumโs consensus,โ Buterin offered some potential solutions to address dangers such as price oracles, either โnot-quite-cryptoeconomic decentralized oraclesโ or validator-voting-based oracles that explicitly commit to their emergency recovery strategies being something other than attractiveย to L1 consensus.
Buterin likewise notedย that more complex truth oracles mayย be counted as a solution as the focus would be on reporting facts more subjective than price. He alsoย mentionedย that it would be โ aย type of decentralized court systemโ built on a not-quite-cryptoeconomic DAO.
Minimizing reliance on cross-chain bridges is likewise important since these protocols have become an attractive target for malicious entities.
Minimalism
Buterin stated that any expansion of the โdutiesโ of Ethereumโs consensus triggers an boostย in costs, complexities likewise as dangers of running a validator. He claimedย that preserving the chainโs minimalism should be the focus which can be achieved by supporting uses of re-staking that doย not look like slippery slopes to extending the role of Ethereumย (ETH) consensus.
He likewise highlighted the importance of helping developers find alternate strategies to accomplish their security goals.
