Consistency Challenges and Solutions in the Ethereum Ecosystem

In the Ethereum ecosystem, achieving a balance between decentralization and collaboration is an important governance challenge. The strength of the ecosystem lies in the numerous individuals and organizations, including client teams, researchers, layer two network teams, application developers, and local community groups, all striving to realize their respective visions for Ethereum. The main challenge is to ensure that all projects can collaboratively build a unified Ethereum ecosystem, rather than forming multiple incompatible independent domains.

In response to this challenge, the concept of "Ethereum Consistency" has been proposed within the ecosystem. This includes value consistency (such as openness, minimizing centralization, and supporting public goods), technical consistency (such as adhering to standards within the ecosystem), and economic consistency (such as prioritizing the use of ETH as a token). However, due to the vague definition of this concept, it may lead to the risk of manipulation at the social level: if consistency merely means having a specific network of relationships, then this concept loses its significance.

To improve this situation, I suggest concretizing the concept of consistency by breaking it down into specific attributes that can be measured by specific indicators. The list of indicators may vary for each person, and these indicators will inevitably evolve over time. However, we already have some reliable starting points:

1. Open Source: The value of this lies in the fact that the code can be inspected to ensure security, and more importantly, it reduces the risk of proprietary lock-in, allowing third parties to make improvements without permission. While not every part of every application needs to be fully open source, the core infrastructure components that the ecosystem relies on should absolutely be open source.

2. Open Standards: Committed to achieving interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem and building on open standards, whether existing or in development. If existing standards do not adequately meet the needs, collaborate with others to develop new standards.

3. Decentralization and Security: Minimize trust points, censorship vulnerabilities, and reliance on centralized infrastructure. This can be assessed through "leave testing" and internal attack testing.

4. Inclusiveness: The success of the project should benefit the entire Ethereum community and even the broader world. This includes using ETH as a token, contributing to open-source technology, and committing to donate a portion of tokens or revenue to public goods.

Clearly, these standards do not apply to all projects. Different types of projects (such as layer two networks, wallets, decentralized social media applications, etc.) may require different metrics. Over time, the priorities of these metrics may also change.

Ideally, we hope to see more entities like L2beat emerge to track the performance of various projects in meeting these standards. Competition between projects should focus on how to better align with these clear standards, rather than competing to establish specific social relationships.

This approach also provides clearer decision-making criteria for organizations like the Ethereum Foundation that wish to support the ecosystem while remaining neutral. Each organization and individual can determine the criteria they care about most based on their own judgment and choose projects to support accordingly.

Only by clearly defining "merit" can true elite management be achieved; otherwise, it may evolve into an exclusive social game. Regarding the concern of "who supervises the supervisors", the best solution is not to hope that all influential people are flawless, but to achieve it through verified technologies such as decentralization.

If we can further clarify the various aspects of consistency while avoiding a focus on a single "supervisor," we can make this concept more effective, fair, and inclusive, which is exactly the goal pursued by the Ethereum ecosystem.