In the words of Vitalik Buterin, “There is a natural urge to try to extend the blockchain's core with more and more functionality… but each such extension makes the core itself more fragile.”
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum (ETH), discouraged overloading the network’s consensus layer to avoid systemic risks to the Ethereum ecosystem.
In a recent blog post, Buterin categorized some real-world scenarios on the usage of the consensus layer under low and high-risk categories.
He said using Ethereum’s consensus for other purposes such as re-staking and recovering layer-2 (L2) projects using layer-1 (L1) blockchains can potentially harm the community.
According to him, a protocol can be considered low-risk if the losses are contained only by the validators and users, without any impact on the larger ETH community. On the other hand, projects that require the Ethereum blockchain to undergo forks or reorgs are highly risky and should be avoided.
Elaborating on the risks, he claimed that stretching the consensus layer can expose the Ethereum network to bugs or allow hackers to launch 51% attacks and gain a majority vote. Moreover, using the blockchain beyond its intended purpose can increase the costs and loads on network validators, and in the worst-case scenario, can lead to community splits.
Advocating minimal use of the Ethereum blockchain, Buterin proposed solutions to counter the risks. He suggested that L2 projects could use multi-provers for rollup security. Similarly, blockchains can use cross-chain bridges and atomic swap protocols to move crypto assets between chains. He concluded by adding,
“We should instead preserve the chain's minimalism, support uses of re-staking that do not look like slippery slopes to extending the role of Ethereum consensus.”
Written by
Ayush Pande
Ayush Pande is a hardware, gaming, and crypto writer based in India. He's a tech enthusiast who's fascinated by the potential of blockchain technology.
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