Reflecting on Ethereum Governance: Insights from the EIP-3074 Incident

Recent controversies surrounding EIP-3074 and EIP-7702 have sparked people's thoughts on Ethereum's governance mechanism. This event highlights the complexity of Ethereum governance and also exposes some areas that need improvement.

Event Review

EIP-3074 was originally approved by core developers and planned to be implemented in the Pectra hard fork. However, the ERC-4337 community subsequently expressed strong opposition, believing it could increase centralization risks and is not in line with the Ethereum account abstraction roadmap.

Finally, Vitalik proposed EIP-7702 as an alternative that better aligns with the EIP-4337 standard. Currently, core developers are discussing adopting EIP-7702 to replace EIP-3074.

The Root Causes of Governance Failure

This event reflects a fundamental issue in Ethereum governance: the core developers' conference (ACD) is not the only decision-making force for protocol updates. In fact, there is an informal governance force known as the "roadmap" that often overrides ACD's decisions on significant matters.

The "roadmap" refers to the overall planning of the future development direction of Ethereum, such as the scalability roadmap and the account abstraction roadmap. Although it does not have an official status, it plays a significant role in actual governance.

Vitalik's Role

In this system, Vitalik plays a role similar to that of a CTO. Although he does not participate in every specific decision, he has a significant influence on the key roadmap. This stems from his understanding of the Ethereum vision and his ability to judge whether the roadmap aligns with that vision.

VVRC Governance Model

We can simplify Ethereum governance into the VVRC model:

1. Values(: Basic principles of community sharing
2. Vision): Vitalik描绘的发展蓝图
3. Roadmap ( Roadmaps ): The technical path developed by the research team
4. 客户端(Clients): Specific code implemented by core developers.

Improvement Suggestions

1. Improve EIP transparency to avoid the community feeling sudden.
2. Strengthen community participation in ACD meeting discussions
3. Promote communication and understanding between core developers and researchers

Through these measures, we can enhance the transparency and efficiency of governance while maintaining innovation, reducing potential issues that may arise in the future.