shazow on Warpcast

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https://ethereum.org

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ pfp

Mac Budkowski ᵏ

anyone watched the Ameen's talk? it sparked an interesting discussion on Kiwi (link below)

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shazow pfp

I think this has more explanatory power: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x21a5d07c

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ pfp

Mac Budkowski ᵏ

interesting perspective. i think Ameen sees himself as a peer with Vitalik, they even wrote papers together :) my impression is that Vitalik (and EF in general) strive for credible neutrality, which is generally good. but there are areas where they do have control, e.g., how they run the EF, who gets the grant, how they influence the roadmap etc. and they should be held accountable for that. since they don't have shareholders or investors, the only people who can do it are the community members. good thing is that in the last few months i saw a lot of great activity at EF that leans into that direction :)

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shazow pfp

I don't think Ameen does, despite wanting that to be true. He sees and assumes hierarchies everywhere. I see EF as a minor player and peer at this point, their internal funding and the funding they provide is a tiny fraction of other players like Paradigm/Coinbase/etc. Sure, everyone should be accountable, no disagreement there. Some people choose to attribute absurd amounts of soft power to individuals and companies who have no real hard power, and it's important to remember this: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0xa8ee491c

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ pfp

Mac Budkowski ᵏ

Could be, I spoke with Ameen maybe twice in my life, so I can't reliably evaluate what does he think. I agree that Vitalik and EF have much less capital than, e.g., Coinbase, but Vitalik still has way more soft power than Jesse Pollak. In my opinion, it's a hard-earned soft power based on merit, but there are areas where V&EF are more competent and areas where they're less. Since we as humans are prone to halo effects, it's important to counter steer and try to always evaluate what people say based on merit, and challenge their POV when it makes sense.

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Which brings us back to my original point: I don't see Vitalik as actually having more soft power than Jesse. Jesse exercises his power all the time, whereas I can't remember when I've last seen Vitalik exercise his alleged power. But again, you can assign whatever soft power to Vitalik you want, and I don't have to agree -- that's the thing about soft power and how we perceive peers/hierarchies. The warning is this: Do what you please with your allocation of soft power, but ignore hard power at great peril. We spend too much time quibbling about soft power, but it's hard power that needs to be actively managed.

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ

So how much impact on Ethereum roadmap do you think Vitalik has had compared to Jesse? As I said, I think Vitalik's impact is hard-earned, but it's undeniable. BTW I don't think soft power is bad, and I got the impression from your replies that this is how you interpret it? Also, what do you mean by hard power here?

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Hard power vs soft power: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0x915be27b Ethereum roadmap over what timescale? From the beginning? Obviously a lot. Last several years? On par with dozens of other people. Vitalik is a great communicator and writes really good blog posts that aggregate discussions that have been happening with many people over many months. I think some people interpret this as a mandate from above, but that's just silly. It has been forever since has participated in ACD regularly. He still continues to exist, he continues to talk to people, he continues to aggregate takes and share them, he continues to drop random funding for the Tornado Cash founders, stuff like that. But lots of good people do this. I don't think that soft power is bad, just that it's different from hard power and hard power is much more important/dangerous to play with.

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ pfp

Mac Budkowski ᵏ

True, yet V (and any other person) can't escape the fact that when you aggregate the discussion, you have to ultimately highlight some points at the expense of others. That's why journalists and editors have a lot for soft power. Yeah, I know the difference between soft and hard power, but what do you mean in the context of Ethereum? Who has the hard power here in your opinion?

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shazow pfp

In Ethereumland specifically, IMO most hard power is held by: 1. Client implementations (execution/consensus nodes with slashing conditions) 2. Validators and restaking mechanisms (Eigen etc) 3. External collateral (RWA like USDC) 4. Over a longer term, funding and resource allocations (VC, grants, etc) (Not sure if this is exhaustive, can you think of others?) In other ecosystems, there are other real hard power structures. For example, in Solana something like >70% of validator stake is *dependent* on the Solana Foundation delegating their stake in order to be profitable. In other words, of the SF revokes their delegated stake, they lose a consensus-breaking majority of validators ~overnight. That is extremely dangerous and very real hard power, unlike V's soft power.

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Mac Budkowski ᵏ pfp

Mac Budkowski ᵏ

Good list! I'd add LSTs like Lido

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