do people actually care about decentralization?
as someone working to build towards every single one of these points, the question i ask myself everyday is: does anyone actually need this?
decentralization is a principle just like "open-source" that often gets violated, blurred, skipped over, larped to valhalla, etc. its important but the general public doesn't really care.
as someone, who is building towards advancements in each one of these categories - i can confidently say nobody really cares (unless u make them).
for example, everyone KNOWS that multi-sig admin powers should be disabled yet we jeet SOL to random memecoin multisigs on the basis of social trust (if you rug, you get "slashed"). i would even argue thats okay - today most projects rely on social trust such that multisigs are okay. Most L2s are more or less multisigs today and people seem to be happy with it.
all people care about is user experience - "when i trade or send money, how can a given feature enhance this"
here's what L2s need to do to NOT suck (more or less agree with Cygaar here just want to reframe):
1) decentralize the damn sequencer. not even in the hurrah spirit of decentralization but moreso for enhanced tokeneconomic strategies.
we can sit here and argue about semantics of the technical viability / performance of centralized v. decentralized sequencers (convo here: ). but focusing on user experience, here are the main points ()
L2 tokens need to evolve beyond governance tokens. Please. With a decentralized sequencing set, a world of staking, MEV, cross-rollup fee markets, state finality guarantees powered by dual staking (AVS basically) is opened. yay no more useless goverrnance tokens!
first major fix to the L2 token dilemma.
2) stop overindexing on validity proofs. the future is zk i agree. validity proofs are great and all but its not a big enough difference between optimistic and *redacted* rollups. if you are looking to get to market and differentiate as a L2, its not enough to be a ZKEVM. theres 7 of those. zk fraud proofs are pretty good too and address most concerns of optimistic rollups around withdrawal times, proving costs (for zk rollups), and security parameters
3) prioritize high-throughput and low latency execution. if there's one thing that SOL tech taught the ethereum ecosystem, is that speed kills. fast transactions especially during periods of high usage is the fundamental most important factor. we cant have L2s tapping out at 100 TPS and sequencers failing from usage.
that literally defeats the point of our systems if we cant actually handle high-throughput exection with native load balancing.
4) be creative. different programming languages, new rollup architectures, unique SDKs idk. do something that literally is not possible on any other L2 - its not enough to market yourself as a social L2 and then launch a generic EVM L2.
the market has shown that the days of the EVM L2 are dead. there is no loyalty, no vendor lockin, little to no authentic ecosystem that can win because its too easy. its too easy to copy and paste my uni v3 contracts to 10 chains. its also too easy for the market to underwrite it as there are 500 other EVM L2 tokens on the market.
so yes I agree with Cygaar that core rollup teams should and ought to work towards decentralization but it should not be the main driving goal or we are ngmi. first, deliver a net new product that offers a net new developer/user paradigm (for movement its the combination of move formal verification with block-stm optimistic parallelization) and THEN worry about decentralization.
otherwise we are decentralizing for the same 5 users and building vaporware that nobody actually wants and/or needs. is Solana the most decentralized? - probably not but who cares. evidently, they have crushed it on prioritizing user experience, community, and growth which brings in users today. over time, they have progressively decentralized and will be in a good shape in the coming months which is great!
no developer today is complaining that they dont have enough economic security or that their rollup isnt decentralized enough. they are complaining that there are no users.
bring L1 principles to Ethereum.
as someone working to build towards every single one of these points, the question i ask myself everyday is: does anyone actually need this?
decentralization is a principle just like "open-source" that often gets violated, blurred, skipped over, larped to valhalla, etc. its important but the general public doesn't really care.
as someone, who is building towards advancements in each one of these categories - i can confidently say nobody really cares (unless u make them).
for example, everyone KNOWS that multi-sig admin powers should be disabled yet we jeet SOL to random memecoin multisigs on the basis of social trust (if you rug, you get "slashed"). i would even argue thats okay - today most projects rely on social trust such that multisigs are okay. Most L2s are more or less multisigs today and people seem to be happy with it.
all people care about is user experience - "when i trade or send money, how can a given feature enhance this"
here's what L2s need to do to NOT suck (more or less agree with Cygaar here just want to reframe):
1) decentralize the damn sequencer. not even in the hurrah spirit of decentralization but moreso for enhanced tokeneconomic strategies.
we can sit here and argue about semantics of the technical viability / performance of centralized v. decentralized sequencers (convo here: ). but focusing on user experience, here are the main points ()
L2 tokens need to evolve beyond governance tokens. Please. With a decentralized sequencing set, a world of staking, MEV, cross-rollup fee markets, state finality guarantees powered by dual staking (AVS basically) is opened. yay no more useless goverrnance tokens!
first major fix to the L2 token dilemma.
2) stop overindexing on validity proofs. the future is zk i agree. validity proofs are great and all but its not a big enough difference between optimistic and *redacted* rollups. if you are looking to get to market and differentiate as a L2, its not enough to be a ZKEVM. theres 7 of those. zk fraud proofs are pretty good too and address most concerns of optimistic rollups around withdrawal times, proving costs (for zk rollups), and security parameters
3) prioritize high-throughput and low latency execution. if there's one thing that SOL tech taught the ethereum ecosystem, is that speed kills. fast transactions especially during periods of high usage is the fundamental most important factor. we cant have L2s tapping out at 100 TPS and sequencers failing from usage.
that literally defeats the point of our systems if we cant actually handle high-throughput exection with native load balancing.
4) be creative. different programming languages, new rollup architectures, unique SDKs idk. do something that literally is not possible on any other L2 - its not enough to market yourself as a social L2 and then launch a generic EVM L2.
the market has shown that the days of the EVM L2 are dead. there is no loyalty, no vendor lockin, little to no authentic ecosystem that can win because its too easy. its too easy to copy and paste my uni v3 contracts to 10 chains. its also too easy for the market to underwrite it as there are 500 other EVM L2 tokens on the market.
so yes I agree with Cygaar that core rollup teams should and ought to work towards decentralization but it should not be the main driving goal or we are ngmi. first, deliver a net new product that offers a net new developer/user paradigm (for movement its the combination of move formal verification with block-stm optimistic parallelization) and THEN worry about decentralization.
otherwise we are decentralizing for the same 5 users and building vaporware that nobody actually wants and/or needs. is Solana the most decentralized? - probably not but who cares. evidently, they have crushed it on prioritizing user experience, community, and growth which brings in users today. over time, they have progressively decentralized and will be in a good shape in the coming months which is great!
no developer today is complaining that they dont have enough economic security or that their rollup isnt decentralized enough. they are complaining that there are no users.
bring L1 principles to Ethereum.
https://x.com/rushimanche/status/1807114001823752492
https://x.com/ayyyeandy/status/1807512113469919433
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