Balance and Collaboration: Governance Challenges of the Ethereum Ecosystem

The biggest governance challenge facing the Ethereum ecosystem is how to strike a balance between decentralization and collaboration. The strength of this ecosystem lies in its wide range of participants, including client teams, researchers, layer 2 network teams, application developers, and local community organizations, all of whom are working towards their ideal vision of Ethereum. The main challenge is to ensure that all projects can work together to build a unified Ethereum ecosystem, rather than splitting into many incompatible independent domains.

To address this challenge, the concept of "Ethereum Consistency" has been proposed within the ecosystem. This includes value consistency (such as open source, minimizing centralization, and supporting public goods), technical consistency (such as adhering to standards within the ecosystem), and economic consistency (such as using ETH as a token whenever possible). However, due to the vague definition of this concept in the past, there is a risk of it being manipulated at the societal level: if consistency merely means having the "right" connections, then the concept loses its significance.

To address this issue, we need to concretize the concept of consistency and break it down into attributes that can be measured by specific metrics. While everyone's list of criteria may differ and the metrics may change over time, we already have some reliable starting points:

1. Open Source: The value of this lies in the ability to inspect the code to ensure security, and more importantly, it reduces the risk of proprietary lock-in, allowing third parties to make improvements without permission. Core infrastructure components relied upon by the ecosystem should be fully open source.

2. Open Standards: Strive to achieve interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem and build upon existing or developing open standards. If existing standards do not adequately serve new features, collaborate with others to write new standards.

3. Decentralization and Security: Minimize trust points, censorship vulnerabilities, and reliance on centralized infrastructure. This can be evaluated through "exit tests" and internal attack tests.

4. Cooperative Thinking: The success of the project should benefit the entire Ethereum community and also make a positive contribution to the broader world. This includes using ETH as a token, contributing to open-source technology, and committing to donate a portion of the profits to public goods, among others.

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

Ideally, we would like to see more entities like L2beat emerge to track the performance of various projects in meeting these standards. Projects should compete to maintain consistency based on clear and understandable criteria, rather than competing to network with the "right" people.

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

Only by clearly defining "merit" can true elite management be achieved; otherwise, it may evolve into an exclusive and zero-sum social game. Regarding the concern of "who supervises the supervisors," the best solution is through time-tested technologies such as decentralization, rather than hoping that all influential people are flawless.

If we can clarify the different aspects of consistency while avoiding the concentration of power in a single "supervisor", we can make this concept more effective, fair, and inclusive, which is precisely the goal pursued by the Ethereum ecosystem.