Thoughts on Ethereum | Q&A

1. What aspects are you curious about that you disagree with Vitalik?

I remember mentioning similar questions in previous articles.

I do have reservations about certain EIPs and Ethereum upgrades, or I still don't fully understand them.

For example, these three:

• I still find it a bit hard to understand Ethereum's transition from POW to POS, but I haven't come up with a strong counterpoint.

I'm not saying that POW is perfect. POW is definitely not without flaws, such as the centralization of mining and the consumption of energy, which are serious issues with POW.

However, I have always been concerned about potential centralization issues with POS. I have read many articles discussing both sides of POS and have discussed this with some friends, raising my doubts. My friends have answered my questions, but I still can't find a solid counterpoint.

So I believe that at least until now, my understanding of this issue is still quite shallow; I can only say that I will continue to learn and move forward.

But one thing I am fairly certain about: POS is better than DPOS. DPOS tends to become centralized, while POS can continuously resist centralization.

• I hold a reserved attitude towards the transformation of Ethereum burning leading to deflation.

In real life, humanity has suffered from the disasters brought about by hyperinflation, so we despise the excessive issuance of currency and yearn for constraints on currency issuance. The mechanism that once became popular in history to constrain currency issuance was the gold standard. The practice of anchoring to gold brought several hundred years of stability and prosperity to the British Industrial Revolution and the development of modern capitalism.

However, the gold standard was ultimately abandoned. The main reason for its abandonment was that the "limited" nature of gold greatly restricted the free development of the economy.

Moreover, more and more research and history have proven that appropriate inflation is not only harmless to human society but also quite beneficial.

Therefore, the ideal currency system in my view should definitely not be a currency issuance system with a constant total amount, but rather an algorithmically controlled currency issuance system that cannot be arbitrarily changed by humans, but allows for moderate inflation.

Ethereum is not Bitcoin; it cannot aim for "constant issuance" or even "deflation" as a goal, but should aim to foster on-chain economies. Under this goal, a more suitable issuance system in my opinion is moderate inflation.

Forcibly injecting a deflationary mechanism seems like a clear case of artificial intervention.

• I find it very regrettable that Ethereum has temporarily abandoned the sharding plan.

I believe that "main chain sharding + layer two scaling" is the most ideal expansion route for Ethereum, but for certain reasons, this route has been changed to only include "layer two scaling."

It's very regrettable.

2. What thoughts do you have regarding applications on Ethereum? We can't always play the empty city strategy, right? If no valuable applications are generated, then the value will continue to decrease.

I agree that the Ethereum ecosystem cannot always play the "empty city strategy." Blockchain technology is destined to spawn applications that are valuable to human society, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.

Although there aren't many of these applications at the moment, or they seem to have little connection to our lives, I believe there will definitely be in the future.

However, up to this point in this market cycle, I have not discovered a single original on-chain application in Ethereum or the entire smart contract blockchain ecosystem.

The popular meme coins in this cycle are not technological innovations but rather the spread of emotions. The AI agent track is also not a chain innovation but rather the application of crypto assets in AI.

The existing on-chain ecosystems (such as DeFi, NFTs, and blockchain games) have not seen significant innovation in this cycle either.

What will the innovative ideas be in the future?

I believe that there will definitely be some original on-chain projects related to artificial intelligence. But are those originals the AI agents we see today? They could be, but they might not be.

Are there possibilities for other originals besides artificial intelligence? I believe there will be, and they may even be just around the corner or have already happened, but we don't know.

So we still need to be patient and wait.