Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has published an article titled “Bringing Ethereum Back to Cypherpunk” today, emphasizing that the underlying vision of cryptocurrency should not be to create isolated tools and games, but to establish a more free and open society and economy.
Vitalik points out that starting from around 2017, due to the rising transaction fees on the blockchain, the majority of participants in the blockchain ecosystem have been wealthy individuals or gamblers. When they become the largest group of users in the blockchain, it adjusts the public’s perception and the internal culture of the cryptocurrency field, leading to many negative effects we have seen in the past few years, including the gradual decline of the “pure Web3 spirit.”
Today, technologies such as Rollups, second-generation privacy solutions, account abstraction, zero-knowledge proofs, etc., are starting to be implemented, and cryptocurrencies seem to have found an opportunity to regain the Cypherpunk spirit. In order to maintain the unique value of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, Vitalik proposes seven values for the Ethereum community and other ecosystems to refer to.
Global open participation: Anyone should be able to participate as a user, observer, or developer, enjoying maximum equality. Participation should be permissionless.
Decentralization: Minimize reliance on any single actor, so that even if the core developers disappear permanently, the application should continue to operate.
Censorship resistance: Centralized actors should not have the ability to intervene in the operation of any user or application. Issues regarding bad actors should be addressed at higher levels of the stack.
Auditability: Anyone should be able to verify the logic and ongoing operations of an application (e.g., by running a full node) to ensure that it operates according to the rules described by the developers.
Trustworthy neutrality: The underlying infrastructure of the base layer should remain neutral, and anyone should be able to perceive its neutrality even without trusting the developers.
Build tools, not empires: Empires try to trap users within their walls, while tools complete tasks and interoperate with a wider open ecosystem.
Collaborative mindset: Even with competition, projects within the ecosystem collaborate in areas that are mutually valuable, such as sharing software libraries, research, security, and community-building. Projects strive for positive-sum outcomes with each other and the wider world.
In addition, Vitalik also points out that the broad Ethereum ecosystem (or web3) should be seen as creating various independent technology protocol stacks and competing with traditional centralized protocol stacks at different levels.
Vitalik states that one of the benefits of viewing it as a stack is that it aligns with Ethereum’s spirit of diversification. The Bitcoin protocol only attempts to solve one or at most two or three problems, while Ethereum has multiple sub-communities focusing on different issues, and there is no single dominant narrative. The goal of the stack is to promote this diversity while striving to enhance interoperability within this diversity.
Furthermore, Vitalik emphasizes the importance of both the technological and social aspects within the Ethereum ecosystem. Diversification and collaboration at the technological level are crucial for Ethereum’s success, while the social aspect involves balancing incentives and values. The article mentions that relying solely on incentives within the protocols is not sufficient to ensure decentralization and requires the reinforcement of the social layer.
The social layer of Ethereum not only values incentives but also emphasizes community warmth and cohesion while avoiding the risks of excessive community-driven decision-making. This balance and integration are key to achieving Ethereum’s vision on both the economic and technical fronts.
