Make Ethereum cypherpunk again

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html

Everything built should be built to not depend on the social layer. No matter how strong and effective the social layer is the probability of it degrading is non 0 and only increases with time.

Here for positive sum games! governance for games maximalist - game dev - trustless dev building http://ocraticarena.com

The problem is that building things to rely solely on incentives is in many cases impractical. A purely in-protocol automated system has no way to "pay people to be decentralized".

"has no way" your mind seems made up about it.
The forces at play are knowable quantities.
A problem to consider with the virtuous ethereum non-financialized governace is that it lacks analytical transparency. You can't prove that it is not a cartel. It is objectively indistinguishable from decentralization theater.

I feel like I've been trying for a decade to solve centralization issues with in-protocol economic means, and it always end up coming up short.

Meanwhile, core devs yelling at people for using [overly powerful thing here] plus Twitter sentiment pointing in the same direction... actually works.

This is why I think the goal of economics in protocol design should step back and be a bit more modest: instead of assuming that it alone can turn bad guys into good guys in all circumstances, focus on at least ensuring that good guys (of which there are a lot) can stay competitive and don't go backrupt.

Not very cypherpunk of you at all.

Gas (for example) makes it costly for the unsophisticated bad to operate. 
This, most of the time, is enough to tilt the possibility space in favor of the good guys. No need to convert. Just make the bad have a relatively bad time.
a16z "progressive decentralization" it is then...

Well... I'm pretty sure I did.
Sunk cost in proposal based systems is the devil and you discouraging even trying... has unfair consequences.
(Retroactive funding @ parseb.eth welcomed. Will resume work on a V2 someday.)
Thank you for your time.

Well... I'm pretty sure I did.
Sunk cost in proposal based systems is the devil and you discouraging even trying... has unfair consequences.
(Retroactive funding @ parseb.eth welcomed. Will resume work on a V2 someday.)
Thank you for your time.
https://mirror.xyz/parseb.eth/5uG76PRrgpCaeJhlNAUL4QrZzGj5SzG7wAlP5xCVzCI

Yeah I agree that in the case of gas it works really well. I'm less convinced that we can find something equivalent in the sphere of protocol governance.