Written by: Daoge
At the end of the article two days ago, there was a reader's comment:
"The cause of the security issue is centralized thinking, and the current method to solve this problem is also centralized."
The phrase "the current method to solve this problem is also centralized" in this comment reminded me of the ubiquitous "centralization" trap in the current crypto ecosystem.
First, I want to emphasize again:
I have always been opposed to "decentralizing" everything. For example, I explicitly oppose the so-called decentralization of management teams (such as the Ethereum core development team), because such decentralization cannot efficiently advance the project (Ethereum) to keep pace with the times.
I also absolutely do not believe that "centralization" or "decentralization" is inherently good or bad. When to "decentralize" and when to "centralize" depends entirely on the specific use case and application scenario.
However, when entering this very unique new world of the crypto ecosystem, all my viewpoints will be tightly focused on "decentralization."
Why?
Because only through decentralization and censorship resistance can creativity be fully unleashed, can the seeds of miraculous creation be nurtured, and can the greatest fruits of human wisdom be born.
But because humanity has long lived under the control of "centralization," our minds are filled with the seeds of "centralization," so the default way of thinking when dealing with anything is "centralized."
It is for this reason that creating such a decentralized, censorship-resistant world is so difficult, has so many pitfalls, and encounters so many problems.
But problems and pitfalls have never stopped the pace of the crypto world, nor can they hinder its progress.
Guided by this thought, the basic criteria I use to judge all Layer-1 blockchains are very clear:
This is the foundation that carries the crypto ecosystem; it must be as decentralized and censorship-resistant as possible.
By this standard, the ones that can be counted on one's fingers are only two: Bitcoin and Ethereum.
So for many years, I have basically ignored other Layer-1 blockchains. Many of them are dressed in very flashy clothes, but in my view, they are fundamentally no different from EOS with only 21 super nodes.
Yes, many of those chains are efficient and operate well, and some even have so-called ecological prosperity at certain stages. But I believe that is only because they haven't yet encountered a catastrophic disaster. And once they face an event that sweeps across the entire ecosystem like this Aave incident, perhaps only Bitcoin and Ethereum will survive in the end.
Regarding Layer-2 scaling, I have always believed that they should be more decentralized. But over the years, their progress has been far too slow.
In fact, the Ethereum ecosystem has already provided multiple solutions for Layer-2 scaling to tightly bind security to Ethereum, such as Native Rollup and the EEZ framework proposed by Gnosis. Had any of these solutions been adopted, the problems Aave encountered, along with many other security issues, would not have occurred on Layer-2 scaling.
In this regard, I look forward to Vitalik enforcing it more robustly, unafraid of offending the many Layer-2 solutions. Projects with long-term vision will surely recognize this as a win-win solution, while those without such vision should be phased out without hesitation.
Otherwise, the vast majority of today's Layer-2 solutions will continue to operate their essentially centralized systems half-heartedly. In the end, they will encounter catastrophic events like Aave.
As for various decentralized applications (dApps), because I once participated in the security audits of many dApps for a period, what I know is that, except for a very few top-tier projects, almost all other dApps have left a "centralized" backdoor—supposedly to hit the "emergency brake" in times of crisis, but it also introduces the risk of rug pulls at any time.
This does not come to light when things are going smoothly, but once a storm hits, it's hard to say.
So when I use dApps in my daily life, I basically only use top-tier products. As for knockoffs, no matter how high the promised returns or how generous the rewards, I avoid them whenever possible.
Of course, in real life, many ideals collide fiercely with reality. Such collisions sometimes force painful compromises.
But such compromises must have a very high threshold.
For example, the recent incident where Arbitrum froze the hacker's assets through their Security Committee has sparked significant controversy.
I think a better approach might be to introduce DAO management, setting a higher voting threshold for the Security Committee. For instance, automatically freeze sudden large-scale assets first, then allow all ARB holders to participate in voting within a specified period, and finally decide through this DAO vote whether to release the frozen assets.
This kind of DAO-based management is itself the "decentralized governance" that the crypto ecosystem has always pursued.
Aave being implicated this time has raised many issues and sparked even more thoughts. But I believe that after this ordeal, genuine projects will become stronger, and the idea of "decentralization" will gain more recognition and understanding.
The crypto ecosystem will consolidate for a period, then continue to advance rapidly.
