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polynyaCrypto's broken moral compass
I’ll begin by saying - obviously, there’s good in crypto. Indeed, I have written over 150 blog posts over the last 3 years about them (and plenty more with previous pseudonyms), and making the best of crypto and related tech. But none of that matters right now - things have swung too far away to the bad side. (Addendum: just for more clarity,FarcasterA decentralized social networkhttps://farcaster.xyzOver the years, crypto has declined into ever more predatory and evil territory. In 2010, the...
polynyaA Vision of Ethereum - 2025
Please consider this as a work of hard science fiction. I had written present tense prose (from 2025’s perspective), but had to rework this post to add in some future tense (i.e. 2021 perspective) for context so it has turned out to be a total mess! So, it’s a terrible work of fiction, but certainly more informative than it was before. — Ethereum is the global settlement layer. Or more technically, the global security and data availability layer. There’s a flourishing ecosystem of external ex...
polynyaThe horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains
Nothing here is new, and indeed, I’ve repeated all of this ad nauseum in 2021. Moreover, it’s completely absurd the industry is mostly obsessing over infrastructure in this day and age, when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of L1s and L2s alike which have barely any non-spam utilization after years of being live. Not to mention exponential growth of blockspace supply incoming in 2024, 2025 and beyond with basically an infinite supply of data availability (with different properties). The ove...
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polynyaCrypto's broken moral compass
I’ll begin by saying - obviously, there’s good in crypto. Indeed, I have written over 150 blog posts over the last 3 years about them (and plenty more with previous pseudonyms), and making the best of crypto and related tech. But none of that matters right now - things have swung too far away to the bad side. (Addendum: just for more clarity,FarcasterA decentralized social networkhttps://farcaster.xyzOver the years, crypto has declined into ever more predatory and evil territory. In 2010, the...
polynyaA Vision of Ethereum - 2025
Please consider this as a work of hard science fiction. I had written present tense prose (from 2025’s perspective), but had to rework this post to add in some future tense (i.e. 2021 perspective) for context so it has turned out to be a total mess! So, it’s a terrible work of fiction, but certainly more informative than it was before. — Ethereum is the global settlement layer. Or more technically, the global security and data availability layer. There’s a flourishing ecosystem of external ex...
polynyaThe horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains
Nothing here is new, and indeed, I’ve repeated all of this ad nauseum in 2021. Moreover, it’s completely absurd the industry is mostly obsessing over infrastructure in this day and age, when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of L1s and L2s alike which have barely any non-spam utilization after years of being live. Not to mention exponential growth of blockspace supply incoming in 2024, 2025 and beyond with basically an infinite supply of data availability (with different properties). The ove...
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
I wrote a bunch of posts & comments on Optimism forums about first steps toward decentralizing and minimum viable decentralization earlier this year, but never posted them here on this blog or on Twitter (Edit: I forgot that I had a Twitter thread about this just 4 days ago lol). Recently, Vitalik wrote about the topic. Basically, what Vitalik calls Stage 1 is what I’m looking for. But here’s my opinion of Stage 1:
The rollup is fully open-sourced
The rollup has established governance (note: not necessarily token, it can be a relatively centralized governance, as long as it’s orderly and transparent)
The bridge has automated rate limiting and circuit-breakers. If there’s an anomalous level of withdrawals to L1 relative to long-term average, withdrawals are appropriately throttled and governance/security council is expected to take action. The throttling can get exponentially longer, to a certain point where it’s effectively paused (i.e. circuit breaker). (Note: this mostly applies to zk rollups & extra-protocol bridges, as optimistic rollup bridges have an inherent delay anyway.)
Fraud proofs and validity proofs are live & audited. Fraud proofs are permissionless, so anyone can post fraud proofs. (Note: in the early days, there can be a whitelist of fraud provers elected by governance)
Sequencers & validity provers can be solo.
However, users can submit transactions from L1 that the sequencer must include. If the sequencer is offline or censoring, then a different sequencer takes over (in case of zk rollups, also proving)
For simplicity, there can be a pool of reserve sequencers elected by governance (see: Lido). The top voted sequencer that’s available fills in, in case the lead sequencer is offline or censoring. Of course, reserve sequencers are appropriately incentivized. You only need one good sequencer/prover, so this should be fine.
There’s a security council consisting of top N (N= 8? 11? Maybe N can be dynamic, according top X% stake voting) elected delegates. The security council has rights to pause the network if 76% vote.
If possible, there should be some exit schemes available while the network is paused.
All upgrades must go through regular governance process, with appropriate delays. (E.g. >7 days for optimistic rollups)
Emergency upgrades following a network pause can have much shorter delays, with appropriate quorum and approval thresholds.
PS: 12/12/22, I’m also OK with this:
Alternatively, in the early days, security council can upgrade with short timelocks determined by approval level. E.g. if 100% approve, 2 hours; 76% → 24 hours etc. Wider L2 governance & in catastrophic cases perhaps even L1 social layer has some time to veto these upgrades, in case the security council is compromised. Immediate upgrade rights to security council should be avoided in this stage IMO.
I believe this will get rollups to a point where it’s “good enough” and the risks are adequately low. See Vitalik’s Stage 2 for the ideal scenario.
I wrote a bunch of posts & comments on Optimism forums about first steps toward decentralizing and minimum viable decentralization earlier this year, but never posted them here on this blog or on Twitter (Edit: I forgot that I had a Twitter thread about this just 4 days ago lol). Recently, Vitalik wrote about the topic. Basically, what Vitalik calls Stage 1 is what I’m looking for. But here’s my opinion of Stage 1:
The rollup is fully open-sourced
The rollup has established governance (note: not necessarily token, it can be a relatively centralized governance, as long as it’s orderly and transparent)
The bridge has automated rate limiting and circuit-breakers. If there’s an anomalous level of withdrawals to L1 relative to long-term average, withdrawals are appropriately throttled and governance/security council is expected to take action. The throttling can get exponentially longer, to a certain point where it’s effectively paused (i.e. circuit breaker). (Note: this mostly applies to zk rollups & extra-protocol bridges, as optimistic rollup bridges have an inherent delay anyway.)
Fraud proofs and validity proofs are live & audited. Fraud proofs are permissionless, so anyone can post fraud proofs. (Note: in the early days, there can be a whitelist of fraud provers elected by governance)
Sequencers & validity provers can be solo.
However, users can submit transactions from L1 that the sequencer must include. If the sequencer is offline or censoring, then a different sequencer takes over (in case of zk rollups, also proving)
For simplicity, there can be a pool of reserve sequencers elected by governance (see: Lido). The top voted sequencer that’s available fills in, in case the lead sequencer is offline or censoring. Of course, reserve sequencers are appropriately incentivized. You only need one good sequencer/prover, so this should be fine.
There’s a security council consisting of top N (N= 8? 11? Maybe N can be dynamic, according top X% stake voting) elected delegates. The security council has rights to pause the network if 76% vote.
If possible, there should be some exit schemes available while the network is paused.
All upgrades must go through regular governance process, with appropriate delays. (E.g. >7 days for optimistic rollups)
Emergency upgrades following a network pause can have much shorter delays, with appropriate quorum and approval thresholds.
PS: 12/12/22, I’m also OK with this:
Alternatively, in the early days, security council can upgrade with short timelocks determined by approval level. E.g. if 100% approve, 2 hours; 76% → 24 hours etc. Wider L2 governance & in catastrophic cases perhaps even L1 social layer has some time to veto these upgrades, in case the security council is compromised. Immediate upgrade rights to security council should be avoided in this stage IMO.
I believe this will get rollups to a point where it’s “good enough” and the risks are adequately low. See Vitalik’s Stage 2 for the ideal scenario.
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