Starting from "The Three Transformations of Ethereum": Vitalik's Offense and Defense
The debate on the life and death of Ethereum can be seen as the horn sounded by Vitalik before the great battle.Author: ThePrimediaDAO Initiator Jerry
Vitalik Buterin talks about the life and death of Ethereum. In "The Three Transitions," Vitalik mentions three transformations of the Ethereum ecosystem—L2, wallets, and privacy—using three parallel structures, referring to life and death three times. In Vitalik's expression, these three transformations are crucial; without any one of them, Ethereum would fail.
However, if you look closely, these three are specific and executable transformation plans, not as critical to life and death as many of the difficult moments Ethereum has faced in its history. Since 2017, Vitalik has been overwhelmed with sharding plans that have repeatedly come to nothing, the huge controversies, disagreements, and even attacks during the transition from POW to POS—Vitalik unintentionally but inevitably shattered the livelihoods of the once-great mining community in the Ethereum ecosystem…
In some difficult moments concerning life and death, Vitalik painted grand visions, claiming to create 1024 shards to directly increase performance by 1000 times; in other difficult moments concerning life and death, Vitalik spoke of dreams, envisioning DeSoc, seeking the soul of Web3…
Now, Vitalik can talk about life and death; this is his most confident moment. Vitalik has the confidence to promote key and specific transformation plans, building his decentralized non-monetary application ecosystem for Ethereum. Yes, this is the direction of his consistent geek spirit.
In the first half of 2021, amidst the soaring sentiment of the bull market, Dogecoin led a frenzy of meme coins, while Bored Apes sparked a wave of speculation around avatars, images, and even Twitter NFTs. At that time, BTC surpassed fifty thousand, then sixty thousand, and Ethereum also stood at historical highs. Even though Vitalik was very clear that the monetary attributes and speculative hype provided Ethereum's ecosystem with a lot of funding and the power of followers and developers, he still expressed deep melancholy, stating that the crypto space needed to deflate, or it would ruin the possibility of building Ethereum's non-monetary application ecosystem.
A prophecy came true. In the second half of 2021, the market reached a turning point, gradually deflating. In 2022, confidence in the crypto space was on the verge of collapse, with a series of major events capable of destroying the mindset of the crypto community occurring one after another. It was also during this period that Ethereum completed its transition to POS, and Vitalik launched the vision of DeSoc, but the market entered a continuous bear market atmosphere.
However, it was also in this year that a group of resilient crypto ecosystem builders had already led us from the zero-sum speculative game of the crypto space into the construction of the blockchain/Web3 industry ecosystem. Perhaps it was the existence of this force that prevented the crypto space from collapsing despite several near-collapse moments; this round of bull-bear transition did not experience a crash like the previous one. For more on this part, please refer to "The Value Logic of 'Civilization Stops' and 'Bear Market Bottoming'."
As we enter 2023, amidst the unfulfilled expectations for Hong Kong and the strong regulatory pressure from the U.S. that has devastated confidence in the crypto space, Vitalik confidently discusses the life and death of Ethereum. As a decentralized community leader, Vitalik has become adept at using the power of words to "lead" the ecological force in the community.
This confidence stems from the progress made in Ethereum's ecosystem construction during this round of bull-bear cycles. Vitalik's loyal followers have even begun to envision the future of a unified protocol in the crypto world. Ethereum is indeed approaching the construction of Vitalik's decentralized non-monetary application ecosystem, such as the achievements in Layer2 and scaling, the role of DeFi protocols in capital allocation for early Web3 projects, and the advancements in foundational Web3 elements like NFTs and DIDs, as well as the practices and experiments in Web3 social, gaming, and DAOs…
The discourse on the life and death of Ethereum can be seen as the clarion call sounded by Vitalik before the great battle. We extract the most pre-battle motivational opening from "The Three Transitions," as follows—
++When Ethereum transitions from a young experimental technology to a mature technology stack that can truly provide ordinary users with an open, global, and permissionless experience, this stack needs to undergo three major technological transformations, roughly occurring simultaneously:++
- ++L2 scaling transformation - Everyone migrates to rollups++
- ++Wallet security transformation - Everyone migrates to smart contract wallets++
- ++Privacy transformation - Ensuring the provision of privacy-protecting fund transfers and ensuring that all other tools being developed (social recovery, identity, reputation) can protect privacy++
++This is the triangular relationship of ecosystem transformation. You can only choose all three of the three.++
++Without the first, Ethereum will fail because every transaction will cost $3.75 (if we have another bull market, then the price will be $82.48), and every product aimed at the mass market will ultimately forget the chain and adopt centralized solutions for everything.++
++Without the second, Ethereum will fail because users are unwilling to store their funds (and non-financial assets), and everyone will migrate to centralized exchanges.++
++Without the third, Ethereum will fail because all transactions (and POAPs, etc.) are visible to anyone, which is too high a sacrifice of privacy for many users, and everyone will migrate to at least some centralized solutions with hidden data.++
If all goes well, we hope to enter the application era in this cycle, starting with Vitalik's decentralized non-monetary application ecosystem. Of course, the crypto world will not enter an era of a unified protocol, and the application ecosystem will not be the endpoint of the crypto world's development.
On the foundation of Ethereum's non-monetary application ecosystem, we will also face the extensibility topics of constructing a digital society/metaverse, approaching Vitalik's DeSoc, but possibly on a grander scale—especially as we face the potential threats brought by AI computing power in the first half of this year. The possibility of constructing the underlying data logic relationships based on the blockchain/Web3 application world to build a digital social order may be the best solution to the AI threat narrative. For discussions on this topic, please see "Why Discussing 'AI Threats' Again is Alarmist."
As mentioned earlier, whether it is the construction of a digital society/metaverse or the correct interpretation of the AI threat narrative, it all relies on the progress of building Ethereum's non-monetary application ecosystem, all starting from Vitalik's pre-battle clarion call.
Vitalik is ready; are you ready?
