Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, recently issued a warning about the potential risks of overloading Ethereum’s consensus in a blog post.
He stressed the importance of maintaining cryptoeconomic stability, stating that if this consensus were to fail, the recovery process would be closely scrutinized by the vast network of developers and users.
Buterin highlighted the systemic risks that could be introduced by specific techniques, urging for such practices to be discouraged. While the recommendations he presented were broad and did not single out individuals or projects, he drew attention to the high-risk nature of overloading social consensus. As an example, he described a situation where a successful Layer 2 project becomes so large and secure that any significant bug causing a loss of funds would force a community fork to recover the stolen funds.
In addition, he proposed potential solutions to mitigate these risks, including the use of price oracles. These are either “not-quite-cryptoeconomic decentralized oracles” or validator-voting-based oracles that don’t solely rely on appealing to Layer 1 consensus for recovery.
Buterin also recommended reducing dependence on cross-chain bridges, which have seen several attacks over recent years. He further cited the recent PEPE meme coin frenzy, which has not only congested the Ethereum blockchain but also significantly increased gas fees.
The popularity of PEPE has also significantly driven Uniswap’s transaction volume, crossing that of Coinbase in the first week of May, with a volume of $1.2 billion versus Coinbase’s $948 million.
