Tech
EIGEN Riches Tempt Ethereum Developers, Even as ETF Approval Nears
A sudden wave of optimism that US regulators may soon approve spot Ethereum ETFs has sent the price of ETH soaring, up 21% this week, its best performance since August 2021.
But beneath the surface, there has been tension in the Ethereum developer community over the future of the largest smart contract blockchain and progress toward decentralization. Criticism has become particularly acute with revelations this week that two of the Ethereum Foundation’s biggest stars accepted multimillion-dollar token incentive packages from EigenLayer, the pioneering restake protocol that has been flagged as a possible systemic risk for Ethereum. Read on.
This article appears in the latest issue of The protocolour weekly newsletter exploring the technology behind cryptocurrencies, one block at a time. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. We also invite you to consult our weekly magazine The protocol podcasts.
Dankrad Feist of the Ethereum Foundation, namesake of “danksharding” and central figure in this week’s drama in the Ethereum community (Bradley Keoun)
MEV SNIPPING! It’s unclear exactly what started it all, but major Ethereum developers have clashed on social media platform maximum extractable value, or MEV – essentially, the use of sophisticated trading robots to pre-empt user trades at the point of execution. On May 16, Ethereum lead developer Péter Szilágyi tweeted about his despair at the lack of progress in solving some of blockchain’s most vexing problems. “Voila, the banking system has been recreated,” she wrote. One of his points was that Ethereum had “glorified” MEV, pointing out, apparently sarcastically, that it was “useless to fight MEV, so you might as well lean on it, right?” (As reported in last week’s issue of The Protocol, US government officials now also appear to be characterizing the MEV as normal operating procedure on the blockchain.) Dankrad Feist, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, retweeted Szilágyi’s post with the message comment, “This would be such a lazy idea if you can’t also tell me what your supposed solutions are that allow local block makers to mine MEVs.” A Backwards-AND-Street followed, and then Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin chimed in, tweeting that “I’m really proud that Ethereum doesn’t have any culture that tries to stop people from expressing their opinion, even when they have very negative feelings about things most important in the world”. protocol or ecosystem.” Buterin, who is it known for writing at lengthinterrupted his work on a project in Kenya to make a Essay of over 3,000 words analyzing the problems, concluding: “I also don’t think the situation is anywhere near as desperate as Peter’s tweets imply.”
AND YOU, DANCRADO? Buterin’s tweet referenced in that episode ^^^ touched on a completely separate topic donnybrook. The pseudonymous crypto influencer Cobie responded to Buterin’s tweet, asking precisely targeted question how he felt about “key developers or researchers taking bundles of life-changing dollars from projects built on Ethereum to become ‘consultants,’ when those projects may have conflicting incentives with Ethereum, now or in the future. ” Initially it wasn’t entirely clear what the comment was referring to. But then, how reported by Margaux Nijkerk of CoinDesk, one of the main developers of the Ethereum Foundation, Justin Drake, disclosed who had taken on an advisory role for the EigenFoundation, with “a significant token incentive that could easily be worth more than the combined value of all my other assets (primarily ETH)” and a value of “millions of dollars worth of tokens contributed over 3 years.” The EigenFoundation supports the restoration of the EigenLayer protocol, a controversial project in part because experts have warned against it potential systemic risks to the Ethereum blockchain. Shortly after, Feist (also mentioned ^^^) confessed that he too had accepted a paid role at the EigenFoundation. The news kicked off a debate on crypto Twitter about whether advising the EigenFoundation would constitute a conflict of interest. “Even if you promise not to let this cloud your judgment, and to do so in your personal capacity, that’s impossible,” wrote Lefteris Karapetsas. One sly wag deadpanned that Ethererum researchers were “regrouping now.”
Last week’s top picks from our Protocol Village column, highlighting the main updates and innovations in blockchain technology.
Throughput-latency graph comparing Mysticeti-C performance to state-of-the-art consensus protocols (Arxiv)
1. Sui Foundationsupporting the Sui blockchain built around the Move the language of smart contractsannounced the successful implementation of the testnet Mysticetes“a new consensus protocol that reduces consensus time on Sui by 80% to 390 ms, making it the fastest consensus level in the industry,” according to the team.
3. Gnosis revealed”Meters,” an on-chain self-custodial wallet that operates within the Gnosis ecosystem allowing a broader set of users to access a realm of decentralized financial applications, according to the team.
4. COTI V2describing himself as a “privacy-focused level 2 on Ethereum,” he revealed devnetwhich features Garbled Circuits, “an innovation that delivers blockchain privacy 1,000 times faster and 250 times more efficient than current solutions,” according to the team.
5. Bitcoin Level 2 Bitfinity has introduced its Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to port smart contracts Bitcoin protocols and leverage runes to enable Bitcoin DeFi apps. Based on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), Bitfinity integrates with the Bitcoin network and allows the connection of assets to other blockchains. The Internet Computer technology stack will allow applications using Solidity, Ethereum’s smart contract programming language, to access Bitcoin-based tokens.
Cosmos co-founder and Informal Systems CEO Ethan Buchman will speak about the “bitcoinization of Cosmos” at Consensus 2024. (Bradley Keoun)
Bitcoin Level 2. Ethereum restaging. Interoperability. TO THE. DePIN. Next generation encryption.
These are just a few of the cutting-edge blockchain technology topics on the agenda on CoinDesk Consensus Conference 2024which will take place from Wednesday, May 29th to Friday, May 31st in Austin, Texas.
For blockchain developers, it’s red meat. The three days are full of opportunities to learn about the hottest cryptographic technology on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos and XRP Ledger, from the world’s leading experts.
We took a look at the agenda to identify phases and sessions that might be of interest to blockchain developers and people interested in the technology. Please consult our guide!
WeatherXM “M5” Package (WeatherXM)
EDITOR’S NOTE: This blog post by influencer Cobie on abusive cryptocurrency fundraising practices is gaining a lot of traction. Check this out too detailed post on node sales by Calvin Chu of Impossible Finance.
June 11-13: ApexXRP Ledger Developer Summit, Amsterdam.
8-11 July: EthCCBrussels.