Learnings from Devcon 2024: Ethereum’s North Star
What is Ethereum? Ethereum is the world’s most decentralized, valuable, and mature general purpose blockchain. Though it is first and foremost a technology, the focus of this year’s Ethereum developer conference, Devcon, was on what Ethereum is as a philosophy and the extent to which the principles and values driving Ethereum protocol development have changed over the years.
Ethereum’s No Good, Very Bad Year
2024 has been a particularly challenging year from the perspective of ETH price and market sentiment.
Many critics of Ethereum argue that the community’s cypherpunk values of decentralization, credible neutrality, and censorship resistance have weakened over time, or even been abandoned altogether. Even within the Ethereum community, disagreements over values have fueled contention in the decision-making process for the Pectra upgrade and heated arguments on X over topics such as the blob fee market and issuance.
Despite the high number of technical innovations and announcements presented at Devcon 7, none were able to offer the community clarity about Ethereum’s long-term value and narrative. By far the most highly anticipated announcement of the week shared by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake was the unveiling of the Beam Chain, a radical proposal to overhaul Ethereum’s current consensus protocol, the Beacon Chain.
Caption: Keynote at Devcon 7 by Ethereum Foundation’s Justin Drake.
Source: YouTube (@EthereumFoundation)
Though Drake detailed several new technical features designed to enhance both Ethereum and Layer-2 functionality, the proposal lacked widespread community support and failed to provide a “North Star”, a forward-looking goal, for stakeholders to get excited about in a similar way to the Merge, Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake.
For several years, the Merge was Ethereum’s North Star. It was a technical upgrade that represented values rooted in environmentalism and decentralization shared by almost the entire community. Since the Merge, no technical upgrade has so clearly aligned with Ethereum’s values, which has in turn fueled confusion and discord among Ethereum stakeholders about how Ethereum as a technology should evolve.
What is Ethereum?
More than the technical announcements, the ideas presented at Devcon about how to build Ethereum and build on Ethereum in a way that promotes values of decentralization and credible neutrality inspired the minds and hearts of Devcon attendees. Though all speakers presented slightly differing philosophies about Ethereum, they all shared the underlying belief that Ethereum is the pursuit of creating permissionless, transparent, and trust-minimized systems for the betterment of humanity.
If ever there was a doubt about the cypherpunk values motivating innovation on Ethereum, the talks at Devcon 7 highlight that these values remain at the core of Ethereum as a philosophy. When asked about the tradeoffs between decentralization and performance, all four panelists on the “Ethereum Values and Ethos Alignment” panel reaffirmed the importance of decentralization over and above performance and scalability.
Caption: Panel on Ethereum’s Values and Ethos at Devcon 7. Speakers from left to right are Ahmad Bitar, Mark Tyneway, Nixo, Peter Szilagyi, and Phil Ngo.
Source: YouTube (@EthereumFoundation)
In his keynote presentation, cofounder of Flashbots Philip Daian talked about the four characteristics of “Ethereum 3.0” that must not be compromised at any cost. They included: permissionless, distributed, geo-economically decentralized, and neutral-builder efficient. Daian pleaded with the broader community to realign focus on promoting and strengthening geographical diversity and permissionless design across all verticals of the Ethereum tech stack over and above other objectives such as mass adoption through an improved user experience.
Caption: Keynote at Devcon 7 by Flashbot’s Philip Daian.
Source: YouTube (@EthereumFoundation)
“The problem is if you combine napkin research with UX fentanyl, that’s a pretty bad situation. I think that is how ETH goes to zero. It’s the combination of napkin research and UX fentanyl eroding the decentralization we’ve built so carefully and leaving us open to capture, the co-opting, and to rebuilding the systems we sought to evade,” said Daian during his keynote speech.
Gnosis co-founder Martin Koeppelmann introduced the idea of “native rollups” in his keynote speech, which are rollups built with Ethereum values such as decentralization and credible neutrality in mind. Practically, for Koeppelmann, this means rollups without multi-sigs that control the critical functions of the rollup, multiple implementations of the rollup proof systems, and rigorous testing of the rollup codebase (i.e. “thousands of eyes scrutinizing every line of code”), just like Ethereum.
Caption: Keynote at Devcon 7 by Gnosis’ Martin Koppelmann.
Source: YouTube (@EthereumFoundation)
Finally, a full day of Devcon programming was dedicated to exploring the defensive acceleration or "d/acc" philosophy. In the words of its creator, Vitalik Buterin, “d/acc [is] a philosophy, set of techniques, and protocols for building technology that makes human agency its means and ends. Every technology we make should be directed towards our shared freedom and happiness.” Many Devcon attendees received a small booklet about the d/acc philosophy as part of their welcome gift to the conference, as well as a booklet on the future of the Ethereum protocol on the last day of the conference, both written by Buterin.
Caption: Cofounder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin opening keynote for d/acc Discovery Day at Devcon 7.
Source: YouTube (@EthereumFoundation)
The booklets and programming at Devcon 7 highlighted an emphasis on a shared philosophy among Ethereum developers over and above a shared technical roadmap. More than any innovation, forthcoming upgrade, or development team in the Ethereum ecosystem, the most compelling North Star presented at the conference was a shared desire among attendees to build permissionless, transparent, and trust-minimized systems for the betterment of humanity.
Legal Disclosure:
This document, and the information contained herein, has been provided to you by Galaxy Digital Holdings LP and its affiliates (“Galaxy Digital”) solely for informational purposes. This document may not be reproduced or redistributed in whole or in part, in any format, without the express written approval of Galaxy Digital. Neither the information, nor any opinion contained in this document, constitutes an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, any advisory services, securities, futures, options or other financial instruments or to participate in any advisory services or trading strategy. Nothing contained in this document constitutes investment, legal or tax advice or is an endorsementof any of the digital assets or companies mentioned herein. You should make your own investigations and evaluations of the information herein. Any decisions based on information contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the reader. Certain statements in this document reflect Galaxy Digital’s views, estimates, opinions or predictions (which may be based on proprietary models and assumptions, including, in particular, Galaxy Digital’s views on the current and future market for certain digital assets), and there is no guarantee that these views, estimates, opinions or predictions are currently accurate or that they will be ultimately realized. To the extent these assumptions or models are not correct or circumstances change, the actual performance may vary substantially from, and be less than, the estimates included herein. None of Galaxy Digital nor any of its affiliates, shareholders, partners, members, directors, officers, management, employees or representatives makes any representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the information or any other information (whether communicated in written or oral form) transmitted or made available to you. Each of the aforementioned parties expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to or resulting from the use of this information. Certain information contained herein (including financial information) has been obtained from published and non-published sources. Such information has not been independently verified by Galaxy Digital and, Galaxy Digital, does not assume responsibility for the accuracy of such information. Affiliates of Galaxy Digital may have owned or may own investments in some of the digital assets and protocols discussed in this document. Except where otherwise indicated, the information in this document is based on matters as they exist as of the date of preparation and not as of any future date, and will not be updated or otherwise revised to reflect information that subsequently becomes available, or circumstances existing or changes occurring after the date hereof. This document provides links to other Websites that we think might be of interest to you. Please note that when you click on one of these links, you may be moving to a provider’s website that is not associated with Galaxy Digital. These linked sites and their providers are not controlled by us, and we are not responsible for the contents or the proper operation of any linked site. The inclusion of any link does not imply our endorsement or our adoption of the statements therein. We encourage you to read the terms of use and privacy statements of these linked sites as their policies may differ from ours. The foregoing does not constitute a “research report” as defined by FINRA Rule 2241 or a “debt research report” as defined by FINRA Rule 2242 and was not prepared by Galaxy Digital Partners LLC. For all inquiries, please email [email protected]. ©Copyright Galaxy Digital Holdings LP 2024. All rights reserved.