Balance and Consistency: Governance Challenges in the Ethereum Ecosystem

A key governance challenge facing the Ethereum ecosystem is how to strike a balance between decentralization and collaboration. The strength of this ecosystem lies in its diverse participants, including client teams, researchers, layer two network teams, application developers, and local community groups, all of whom are working towards their ideal vision of Ethereum. The main challenge is to ensure that all projects collaboratively build a unified Ethereum ecosystem, rather than creating numerous incompatible independent territories.

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, supporting public goods), technical consistency (such as adhering to standards within the ecosystem), and economic consistency (such as using ETH as the token whenever possible). However, since this concept has historically been vaguely defined, there is a risk of it being manipulated at the societal level: if consistency merely means getting along with the "right people," then this concept loses its meaning.

To address this issue, we should concretize the concept of consistency and break it down into attributes that can be measured by specific indicators. While everyone's list of indicators may differ and these indicators will inevitably evolve over time, we already have some solid starting points:

1. Open source: The value of this lies in the fact that the code can be inspected to ensure security. More importantly, it reduces the risk of proprietary lock-in and allows third parties to make improvements without permission. Core infrastructure components should be completely open source.

2. Open Standards: Committed to achieving interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem and building based on existing or developing open standards. Applications and wallets can be rated based on the number of compatible standards they support.

3. Decentralization and Security: Minimize reliance on centralized infrastructure, avoid trust points, and reduce censorship vulnerabilities. Assessment can be done through methods such as "leave testing" and internal attack testing.

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

These standards do not apply to all projects; different types of projects (such as layer two networks, wallets, decentralized social media applications, etc.) will have different applicable metrics. Over time, the priority of these metrics 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 adhere to clear standards rather than vying to make the "right friends."

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

Only by clearly defining "merit" can true elite management be achieved. The best solution to the concern of "who supervises the supervisors" is through verified technologies such as decentralization, rather than hoping that all influential people are flawless.

By making the different aspects of consistency clearer while avoiding a focus on a single "supervisor," we can make this concept more effective, fair, and inclusive, which is precisely the goal pursued by the Ethereum ecosystem.