Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
Make Ethereum cypherpunk again https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/12/28/cypherpunk.html
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Freddy Mertens
@freddymertens
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.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
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".
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parseb
@parseb.eth
"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.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
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.
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
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.
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parseb
@parseb.eth
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...
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Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
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.
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Devansh Mehta
@thedevanshmehta
Protocol governance is usually soft dictatorship, there is one leader who the community will follow when there's too much strife
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