Blockchain
On the recent episode of Unchained’s new show, The Chopping Block hosted a thought-provoking conversation with EigenLayer’s founder Sreeram Kannan. Kannan gave a new perspective on the recent precautionary post on the Ethereum consensus warning against excessive risk-taking.
So what’s the deal with that Vitalik post about re-staking?
@hosseeb and @tarunchitra discuss why Vitalik, like any religious leader, has to drop a good sermon every now and then.
Listen now: https://t.co/wW6h0k6ibj pic.twitter.com/Iq9kpLYfKI
— Laura Shin (@laurashin) May 25, 2023
While on the show host Robert Leshner acknowledged the risks of overcharging the Ethereum consensus, as discussed by Vitalik Buterin in his recent blog post, he highlighted the potential benefits of supercharging Ethereum validators. He argued that if the external economic incentives strengthen Ethereum validators, it could be beneficial to the network. However, Kannan offered a different perspective:
I have a slightly different take on this. The title of the post was “Don’t Overextend the Ethereum Consensus.” But basically, if you read the content, it’s “don’t overload the Ethereum social consensus.”
Using a government analogy, Kannan suggested developers should avoid taking excessive risks and expect Ethereum to bail them out. Instead, he advocated individual accountability and handling issues at a different layer, separate from Ethereum’s core protocol. He stressed the importance of not relying solely on Ethereum to resolve conflicts or errors in other applications.
In the said blog titled “Don’t Overextend Ethereum’s Consensus,” Buterin expressed his concerns about using Ethereum’s security model and social consensus for various experiments. The post dug into the potential risks, questioning whether Ethereum would split off or favor certain holdings when problems arise. Buterin’s intention was to encourage careful examination of the potential benefits and risks of such efforts.
The upcoming EigenLayer protocol, which aims to leverage Ethereum’s network consensus for additional purposes, was specifically covered in Buterin’s blog post. Buterin cautioned against this approach, warning of the high systemic risks it could pose to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Kannan agreed with Buterin’s sentiments on Twitter, highlighting EigenLayer’s three underlying trust models: economic trust, decentralization trust, and ETH validator pledges. Kannan acknowledged that each model has its own potential use cases, but it remains uncertain which, if any, will be embraced by Ethereum validators.
