Reducing Vitalik Scam Velocity
It is no secret that Vitalik Buterin likes complexity. While I am surely not qualified to get into the crypto-nitty-gritty, I have a certain knack for distilling concepts into digestible morsels. In this post, I will attempt to break down his most recent offering: Base Layers And Functionality Escape Velocity
This is surely a waste of time to some degree, but I like a challenge and need to keep my chops up. I’d also like to demonstrate the value of speaking in plain English, particularly when lobbying for disruption of multi-billion-dollar networks.
“Base Layers and Functionality Escape Velocity”
This is a fancy way of saying “Blockchains And Utility.”
Here, Vitalik correctly explains that it is common knowledge that blockchains should be simple. He oversimplifies this as “because they are … infrastructure that is difficult to change” and harmful to break.
Vitalik rarely simplifies things, so why has he here? Blockchains need to be simple in order to make them maximally decentralized. Otherwise they are insecure and censorable, defeating their entire purpose.
Vitalik might have blinders on, but this sets the tone for the article: He wants blockchains to be easy to change. More importantly, he doesn’t want silly users getting in his way while changing them. He wants centralization, whether he realizes it or not.
He then goes on to pull sleight-of-hand by conflating complexity with being powerful:
“layer 1 cannot be too powerful, as greater power implies greater complexity”
Complexity always has a cost, all costs add weight, all weight brings centralization. A blockchain becomes maximally powerful by being maximally SIMPLE because it is has minimal weight. It must be portable and verifiable by any economic participant at as high a sample rate as possible.
Vitalik explains that he believes a blockchain requires a higher-degree of complexity than the current standard, in order to make even more complex layers possible:
“if layer 1 is not powerful enough, then you can talk about filling in the gap with layer 2 systems, but the reality is that there is no way to actually build those systems, without reintroducing a whole set of trust assumptions that the layer 1 was trying to get away from.”
Here he once again pulls a fast one. He portrays current layer 2 systems as requiring more trust, all while trying to convince the reader to inject those trust requirements into the base layer instead. It’s already bad enough to have buggy smart contracts and oracles supported at the base layer, and Ethereum already suffers massive scaling and centralization issues, but alas, not enough for Vitalik!
Layers are specifically excellent for experimenting with trust relationships, complexity, and disruptive concepts, because oversights cannot harm the base layer.
All blockchain complexity can be rooted in the basic ability to maintain database integrity trustlessly for keys and stored values, along with a protocol for making changes to that database. Engineers have shown time and time again that this root allows key-schemes that make amazing optimizations and complexities possible.
The Purpose of Ethereum is the Purpose of Ethereum
Vitalik makes minimal effort to argue or acknowledge the benefits of a maximally simple blockchain, largely because he has an agenda: buttering up his followers for a centrally executed fork of extremely questionable and risky design. He wants obedience and the power to continue designing mouse traps within Rube Goldberg machines within platforms for making platforms.
Here he argues that a base layer must have custom programs that are served on the base layer. Why?
“layer 2 protocols that are going to be built on top need to have some kind of verification logic, and this verification logic must be executed by the blockchain somehow.”
It’s rich for Vitalik to lean on verification logic on the base layer when his base layer designs are nearly impossible to fully verify for most people.
Every blockchain is already a database with verification logic, the protocol. Vitalik just wants to ignore that we all already have computers and pretend that execution needs to be done within such protocols. He, for some reason, wants to bring out his favorite red fish again: Turing completeness.
Rich Statefulness Was Always a Red Herring
Here, Vitalik makes what I hope is a sinister inside joke, but pretty fucking funny considering my above accusations of recursive absurdity. In this example, he attempts to demonstrate the utility of rich statefulness … to provide a largely useless function that would allow stolen coins to never be withdrawn by anyone, instead of be stolen. I suppose a couple drunk game theorists could have fun with this, but I’m not impressed.
“Unfortunately this technique cannot be implemented with just pure functions.”
LOL! Unfortunate to no one but you and your argument, sir. Sure, I might be under-appreciating something that is more than useless, but surely we can have higher standards for forks, rabid complexity, and and entirely new blockchains than more-than-useless new features. Features which, by the way, could surely be implemented on layers right now. Lightning itself is already a caching layer with punishment mechanism, in case you haven’t noticed.
Having Your Herring, and Eating It Too
Here he argues that layers should be able to fully replicate base layer functionality. This is a bit recursive in that he is saying a lack of complexity on the base layer is preventing redundant behavior on added layers. Layers are for adding complexity, or abstraction, not redundancy. However, I’m also skeptical that soft forks could not provide some of the base that is required for the Layer 2 of Vitalik’s dreams, instead of making a whole new blockchain. For example, SIGHASH_NOPINPUT and “eltoo” for Bitcoin.
He then makes another example to argue for such complexity:
“systems like Uniswap, for example, include a large “central” contract that is not owned by anyone, and so they cannot effectively be protected by this paradigm.”
On one hand, I want to argue that current efforts to get RGB tokens on Lightning are essentially creating a Layer 3 with DEX functionality, but that doesn’t actually exist yet, and maybe it never will.
On the other hand, he is using something that already exists in Ethereum as an excuse to build a new Ethereum so Ethereum can have what is already on Ethereum. The purpose of Ethereum is, once again, the purpose of Ethereum?
Here is where I’m starting venture beyond my understanding a bit. I have not the time to research Uniswap, nor ZK roll-ups, but I trust there are other Bitcoiners up to the task of demonstrating how such designs are either always requiring of trust regardless of their layer, or achievable without making entirely new blockchains via forks… or just not useful as anything more than performance art, like most of Ethereum’s offerings.
Regardless of the details, Vitalik once again argues for a heavier chain, despite a total lack of reputation for scaling the one he already has. He waves away any concern with “internet bandwidth continues to grow quickly, and does not seem to be slowing down”. In this section he is basically saying to ignore the lack of progress, and additional stress complexity has, on scaling, because external progress will protect you (him).
Vitalik is declaring that the sky is blue today, and shall remain blue every day until his appetite for complexity subsides. He is the embodiment of infinite demand for blockspace and computation. Alas, the sky is not blue, Ethereum is bloated and he would rather kill it and start over than use a superior architecture and approach (Bitcoin).
Why address a rapidly expanding and unscalable blockchain when you can just delete it and move to proof of stake? If you’re gonna be centralized, you may as well exercise such power!
This is Not the Blockchain You Are Looking For
In conclusion, Vitalik wants to instill within the reader that any lack of complexity within a blockchain is akin to cutting corners. Why “make up for it later” when we can make things up now! Well, sir, despite your framing this as an effort to achieve a “universal answer to blockchain scalability”, you seem to be preoccupied with making them less scalable and more centralized.
It is disingenuous to portray all “so-called” layer 2’s as currently “trusted intermediaries” as well. Particularly in that, in the end, you leave one shining golden nugget to any reader that managed to grind through your wall of propaganda:
“it is true that beyond a certain point, any layer 1 functionality can be replicated on layer 2, and in many cases it’s a good idea to do this to improve upgradeability”
Alas, Vitalik considers his ideas to be exceptional, and therefore outside of responsibility to the common good and common sense. He is the boss, after all.
