Written by: vitalik.eth
Compiled by: Plain Language Blockchain
"Ethereum was not born to make finance more efficient, nor to make applications more convenient. It was born to give people freedom."
This is the opening statement of the Trustless Manifesto. It is worth our redeployment and a deep understanding of its underlying meaning.
The terms "efficient" and "convenient" often carry the connotation of optimizing for the "average case," meaning improvements on a foundation that is already quite good. So-called efficiency refers to having the world's top engineers pour their hearts into reducing latency from 473 milliseconds to 368 milliseconds, or increasing the annual percentage yield (APY) from 4.5% to 5.3%. So-called convenience refers to allowing users to click once instead of three times, or reducing registration time from about 1 minute to 20 seconds.
Doing these things is certainly good. But we must recognize that in this field, we can never win against those Silicon Valley party companies. Therefore, the core game Ethereum participates in must be a different one. What is that game? It is "Resilience."
The "resilience" game is not concerned with whether the APY is 4.5% or 5.3%, but with minimizing the probability that you will encounter a -100% return (complete loss).
The "resilience" game means: even if you are politically unpopular and get banned, even if the developers you rely on disappear, even if Cloudflare goes down, or even if an internet war breaks out, your 2000-millisecond latency will remain at 2000 milliseconds and will not be interrupted.
The "resilience" game means: anyone, anywhere in the world, can access this network and become an equal participant.
This sovereignty does not refer to lobbying to become a member of the United Nations or later shaking hands with people at the Davos Forum; rather, it is akin to what people often call "digital sovereignty" or "food sovereignty"—actively reducing vulnerability to external dependencies that could be severed at any moment. This is the meaning of sovereignty that the "world computer" can achieve, and it strives to grant its users sovereignty as well.
This foundation supports an "interdependence among equals," rather than becoming a vassal to corporate overlords thousands of kilometers away.
This is the game Ethereum is destined to win. In this turbulent world, Ethereum provides the value that many people need.
The foundational DNA of Web2 consumer tech is not suited for "resilience." The foundational DNA of "finance," while investing sufficient effort in resilience, is a very specific kind of resilience, only adept at mitigating certain types of risks and powerless against others.
Block space is abundant. But decentralized, permissionless, and resilient block space is not. Ethereum's mission must be to create decentralized, permissionless, and resilient block space, and then to make that space abundant.
