The Synergy and Balance of the Ethereum Ecosystem: Building a New Approach to Consistency

In the Ethereum ecosystem, balance is a critical governance challenge, especially in seeking equilibrium between decentralization and collaboration. The strength of this ecosystem lies in the wide range of individuals and organizations, including client teams, researchers, layer two network teams, application developers, and local community groups, all working towards their respective visions for the future of Ethereum. The primary challenge is to ensure that all projects collaboratively build a unified Ethereum ecosystem, rather than a multitude of incompatible independent domains.

To address this challenge, many participants in the ecosystem have proposed the concept of "Ethereum consistency." This may include value consistency (such as open-source, minimizing centralization, and supporting public goods), technical consistency (such as collaborating with standards across the ecosystem), and economic consistency (such as using ETH as a token where possible). However, this concept has not been clearly defined in the past, which may lead to the risk of being controlled at the social level: if consistency merely means maintaining relationships with specific groups, then the concept of "consistency" loses its meaning.

To address this issue, I believe we should make the concept of consistency more concrete by breaking it down into attributes that can be measured by specific metrics. Everyone may have different views on these attributes, and the metrics may also change over time. However, we already have some reliable starting points:

1. Open Source: This point is important for two reasons: firstly, the code can be examined to ensure security; secondly, and more importantly, it reduces the risk of proprietary lock-in and allows third parties to make improvements without permission. Not every part of every application needs to be fully open source, but the core infrastructure components that the ecosystem relies on absolutely should be.

2. Open Standards: Strive to achieve interoperability with the Ethereum ecosystem and build on open standards, whether they are existing or in development. If existing standards do not meet the needs, collaborate with others to write new standards. Applications and wallets can be rated based on the number of compatible standards they support.

3. Decentralization and Security: Avoid trust points, minimize censorship vulnerabilities, and reduce reliance on centralized infrastructure. The level of decentralization and security of a project can be assessed through "leave testing" and internal attack testing.

4. Cooperative thinking: The project should bring benefits to the entire Ethereum community and make a positive contribution to the broader world. This can be achieved by using ETH as a token, contributing to open-source technology, and committing to donate a portion of the profits to public goods.

Clearly, these standards do not apply to every project. For different types of projects, such as layer two networks, wallets, decentralized social media applications, etc., the applicable metrics can vary greatly. Over time, the priorities of different metrics may also change.

Ideally, I would like to see more entities similar to existing data platforms emerge to track the performance of various projects in meeting the aforementioned standards as well as other standards proposed by the community. Projects should not compete to establish networks of relationships, but rather compete to maintain consistency based on clear and understandable standards.

This approach will provide a clearer path for the Ethereum Foundation and other organizations and individuals who wish to support and participate in the ecosystem while maintaining neutrality, helping them decide which projects to support and use. Each organization and individual can determine the criteria that matter most to them based on their own judgment and select projects partially based on these criteria.

Only by clarifying the definition of "merit" can true elite management be achieved; otherwise, it may evolve into an exclusive and zero-sum social game. As for the concern of "who supervises the supervisors", the best solution is not to hope that all influential people are flawless, but to achieve this through verified technologies such as decentralization.

If we can further 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.