DAPPCON 2025: Ethereum's Evolving Social Layer - Paul Dylan-Ennis

Transcript

Um, okay. Uh, hello everybody. I'm uh extending the the talk. It's a bit of a double act this between an and myself. Um, I'm going to talk about Ethereum's evolving social layer. Um, okay. So, in case you just arrived, so some people may have missed An's talk, which is basically the comprehensive overview of the paper. I'm just going to give a little summary like a very quick summary as I see it. Um the paper is called tending the infinite garden organizational culture in the Ethereum ecosystem. It's submitted to the journal of cultural economy which is um basically the only journal in the whole

of academia which is sympathetic to crypto. So give them some love. If you ever want to read any academic journal that's where to go. Uh it's improvise and resubmit. So we've done our revisions, we've resubmitted it, now we're just waiting for some other academics to sign off on it. This being academia, it takes a very long time. This article would have been started maybe two years ago, the first seeds of it, maybe a year and a half on it to do the interviews and the work. And then even now we're still waiting, right? Such is life of an academic. Basically the opposite of crypto. Everything takes much longer. Um so in the paper what we did is we're trying to find some imaginaries pre-existing imaginaries that were identified by academics and then see if we could discover a new one which is what we do. We find the the

infinite garden imaginary. Uh as an explained um imaginaries is just a fancy academic term meaning the way things go on between each other. Uh the expectations we have of each other and how we lend legitimacy to decision making. It also involves uh an idea of what the future would be like, the sociotechnical future, what the cultural endgame might end uh up like. We interviewed a bunch of people. It's basically a who's who of uh Ethereum core developers as we call them in the paper. So, Vitalic, Alex, Ben, uh Trent, Puja, uh Alex Stokes, etc. Right? So, it's a very high quality group of people to have talked to. Um yeah, so that's the the general idea. Now, what I'm

going to do is talk about uh how things have gone since, right? What's the the deal with Ethereum since this point? Now, up until maybe 5 years ago, every academic paper on crypto was the same. They basically went something like this. Uh the crypto people say things are decentralized, but did you know they're actually centralized? It was the most boring thing you could imagine as an academic. Every paper went the same way. Uh but in recent years, there's been a bit of an evolution. And so, now it's more common to understand blockchain communities as polyentric. So this is the term the the term of art in the industry meaning multiple uh overlapping decision-making centers what we would call stakeholders right with some degree of autonomy engaging in cooperation competition conflict and conflict

resolution. Now the first thing that struck me on rereading the article is that we really focus as you saw with Anne's paper on this idea of cooperation and conflict resolution when interviewing the core devs you get this very strong sense of high trust amongst each other and the sense that they feel that all issues could be resolved right consensus can always be reached as Vitalik says we simply talk it out right that's the the general uh gist that you get from these interviews now what we missed is the competition and conflict because or at least At least in my uh estimation, the reason we missed this is because we were so focused on one particular stakeholder group. So we were just talking to the core devs uh and not taking into account the other stakeholders. And I'll do a stakeholder

set list a little bit later on. And so we missed the beginnings of the coup, the shakeup, right? The the revolt against the Ethereum Foundation uh that happened and maybe we would have seen that if we talked to more people. Now the reason we did this is again something to do with academia which is from our perspective this is all very familiar right you're talking about the Ethereum foundation you're talking about uh core devs uh to academics who read these journals they have no idea what you're talking about you have to pick one group you have to simplify things and by necessity you end up distorting the situation to some degree uh another thing I think uh that really struck me is if I was writing this today or me and an decided right we're going to write a new article today we'd probably start

off by focusing on the Ethereum foundation, right? That's where all the drama is. That's where all the excitement is today. Whereas at that point, right, when we were writing this article, that wasn't really the case, right? The Ethereum Foundation was something we didn't talk about. It did a lot of stuff in the background. Uh, and now it's become a entirely different beast. So, if you're working at the Ethereum Foundation, we're going to be watching what you're doing. Uh, so not to freak you out or anything, but that's what we're doing. Um, okay. So, stakeholder expansion dilemma. Another aspect of the paper that stood out to me is um this is a term I guess that I'm trying to introduce. Uh you can see in the paper that uh the core devs are aware of this, right? They know that what's going to be the big issue in the

coming times is the desire of the wider stakeholder set to voice their concerns and to influence the core development process in some kind of way. And what is this going to involve? Let's say from the cultural perspective well it's going to involve a challenge to the traditional cyberpunk value. So uh here's Alex Stokes. seems that things have gotten bigger. I expect they'll keep getting bigger uh in some form of fashion. So it happens as it happens it will be harder to maintain alignment. Uh how do we incorporate the interest of these stakeholders into development without compromising our cipher punk values? I don't think it would be easy. Right? All the signs were there in retrospect in reading this article you can see that subtle awareness. Now the other starting point that I would do uh or we would do if we were starting a paper now is uh we have the perfect

beginning for a new article because of course all core devs for those who don't know the the kind of governance calls uh for Ethereum are being reconfigured. So this is a a major change and a really excellent starting point for any future academic article and this is going to involve a few things. one of which is the flagship right the EIP is having a flagship or like a theme uh basically uh so that that's different and then also the idea of including the stakeholders right so the stakeholders are going to have more of a voice and so this would be a perfect uh way to begin now um in Tim's post you can see a rec recognition that the categorization of the stakeholders would be the most important thing and so what I'm going to do briefly is just uh talk about what I consider the stakeholder set in 2025

Five. Now, there's a real metaphysics of stakeholder set generation in Ethereum culture. Anybody who's worth their salt in like Ethereum social science thinking or uh like a philosophy of Ethereum whatever uh has their own stakeholder list. Vlad Zamfir has one all the way back in 2016. Uh Vitalik has one of course right um Tim Bico has one in his his governance talks. Uh Trent has it in his commons work. uh blockchain gov the other academics are rivals they have a uh and then I also have it in absolute essentials of ethereum and then Ann and I have a stakeholder list in our paper now this is a very rough list uh kind of thrown together on file verse so that's why it's kind of maybe uh uh you know I'm still learning how to use it so it's

not the prettiest uh slides yet shout out fileverse by the way and the excel um so the this is how I see the core devs as the presumed stakeholder set today we know that these are grandfathered in they have to be included but there are issues around the core devs today that I think are interesting. So the core devs up until the the last call effectively right the the way in which decisions would be made is that the chair of the ACD would effectively go around and tell people here are the options and then everybody would chime in and then if there was rough consensus reached then you know that's the decision that would be gone with but you could see in the last call with eof that we saw some stakeholders appear in the call complicate matters such that it had to be shelved and so

that's something from an academic perspective that I think would need to be discussed when it comes to the core devs. and the wider stakeholder set. Does everybody get to pitch in a little bit? Uh the researchers here, the interesting thing for me is the remnant of I's reign. Uh a couple of things calling it the infinite garden was probably a bit wrongheaded, right? Because that's fallen out of fashion. Uh but um subtraction, right? The process of subtraction. Is Ethereum Foundation still in this process of subtraction? Is this something that's still being pursued? or have we switched over into this idea that the Ethereum Foundation is essentially the guiding entity as Christine Kim has been raising in her uh newsletter? Uh the organizers um okay so Ethereum ker kah herers the protocol guild um and the chair of the ACD is

always an Ethereum Foundation person. This is something again that Christine Kim brings up. It's a very very powerful uh position right between Tim and Alex. are essentially the people who decide when rough consensus is reached effectively a little bit on a a viby kind of way during the calls. uh and that's something uh to be uh interrogated although my position is actually it's better just to keep them right they're obviously uh very competent uh at it but it's worth from an academic article perspective uh bringing up the Ethereum Foundation a can of worms here represented by my favorite Shawe um so the foundation at the time of writing this article was effectively something we didn't really mention that much uh and now has switched into this as mentioned this this guiding role to me that's the most

fascinating question. Uh the most fascinating uh difference between then and now. So the EF is something we didn't talk about to the EF is now uh very much guiding what what's happening. Okay. Uh another group of stakeholders who may or may not be included, the end users and power users. So the average Joe and Jane represented here by LDF who uh volunteered for this. Uh you know, someone who just wants Ethereum to or ETH to go to 10K. And then the power users who I've kept as Dr. Nick here, but of course that's now controversial, right? He's a bit of a defector. Um so these highly uh experienced and sophisticated class of Ethereum users.

So we could also say have you know spec specialist people. Now I've been arguing for a long time that this is probably a group of people who are too messy to have involved in core governance. But it is fascinating to me that we've never figured out a feedback uh mechanism. Now in articles in Coindesk all the way back in 2023 24 why don't we have some way for them to signal uh whether they agree that the EIP is the theme is the correct way to go. It seems something relatively simple to do. It could be done online and it could also be done say at Devcon or DevCon. Um and uh non-binding uh uh feedback. I don't know why we haven't done this. Um and by we here I'm talking broader Ethereum community. Okay. Um are three uh the groups that will definitely be in and I'm going to skip past them

because of time. Um but these are the groups that are the I I suspect most likely going to be included in future core governance um uh discussions and uh they are a complete mess right it's really really complicated when you begin digging into it so you can have a Nixo style home staker but you also have chorus one you also have lido you have relays and builders and then the builders themselves here represented by Lawrence shout out to West Ham we have a I could see you guys there um right so it's everything from say more aligned entities uh like um uh let's say Dune Analytics or L2B all the way to centralized exchanges right so where do we have the criteria to say like to demarcate the boundaries legitimacy in

the imaginary sense that's perhaps where a shawei style DeFi punk criteria setting may become important the rollups uh who are now uh kind of in the cold culturally um but are the most integrated into governance I feel actually that's probably the most existential topic we aren't really addressing that uh We have long had this idea of the rollup ccentric roadmap and now we're back to scaling the L1. Uh you know healing that that bond sounds a bit hippie-ish but it is something I think we need to talk about at some point. Maybe this is the way that we go about it. uh the ambiguous stakeholders. Um those of you who know me know that these are my uh two uh let's say my yeah my my ideological enemies right the the media and uh the investors in BC in particular types of media not say nivist media like

the daily guay or bank list although bunk list is obviously way better uh but the the block works extended universe right that kind of group of podcasts where it's the VC talking heads and I think there's a a complicated question there that I'm going to talk about I don't believe they should be included in protocol governance but they are part of the stakeholder set and they we probably should begin including them to some degree. Now, um the other uh part that I want to talk about is today obviously if we're talking about imaginaries, we have to talk about the emergence of this new imaginary which we can call the pragmatist imaginary or which I'm calling the pragmatist imaginary.

Today it's called Tamasism. Uh last week it was Dankradism. I've got the blessing from Dankrad. Now I have to get the blessing from Tomas. The way that I see it, it's like a dread pirate Robert situation. if you're pragmatically minded, business-minded will like change like each time depending on whether they may or may not be in the audience. I did see them a few days ago, but I was not confident enough to go up and talk to them. Um, so today it's Tamasism. This is someone, right, who is interested in Ethereum's competitive position. So, uh, there's a bit of a repression here. When we say competitive position, what do I really mean? We mean Salana, right? That's the the real threat. That's what we're really talking about. Um, so maintaining Ethereum's competitive position, bringing in institutional app orientation, all those strategic initiatives. um and thinking very much

in the near term right so when you think of this Tomas ism or dankratism uh I'm very much thinking of somebody who sees the job as like a two threeyear timeline threat I do believe this group is ethereum aligned uh to evoke that term uh and they have uh yeah an interest in the values but they tend to minimize them and they tend to use very specific language security privacy and censorship resistance which comes from pav versatio's ethereum cyberpunk manifesto uh where it's uh those are the three principles but we don't tend to get much detail and we do tend to see certain terms disappearing. Decentralization, permissionlessness in particular, less and less said by this particular group.

Now, um I do also think that the pragmatist uh turn is in a productive relationship with uh what I like to call the Shawe uh or OG cipher punk uh the other imaginary meaning Vitalic Shaw civil culture people uh who are uh the long-term tinkers, right? They're the ones who are really obsessed more with the the 10-year plan the after this week. So I was thinking like okay what's the best situation that we have at the moment and I do believe the situation more and more is probably one where we need to stay out of each other's way. It's temperamental. There are people who are more pragmatic. There are people who are um people who are practical pragmatic lead them to it and then the OG cipher punks lead them to it. Don't get into each other's way and then maybe things will be okay. Right? So maybe

things will be fine. Uh so um yeah why not both uh to put it another way. Okay. My favorite group uh in the more negative sense is uh uh this group, the other pragmatist imaginary. Now, if you're not a culture vulture like myself, right, who spends time listening to uh Ethereum adjacent podcast, you may not be super aware of this kind of thing, but there is another imaginary when it comes to Ethereum, post ideological pragmatism. This is a term that comes from their world, right? It's not my term. They use it themselves. And in this group, I think the core difference is that they don't really care uh whether Ethereum is like, you know, second or first, right? So, it's not about Ethereum beating Salana, etc.

It's just that ETH the asset performs. ETH could be in the fifth position and Salana second, but if ETH has gone to 10K and the portfolio has gone up, the post ideological pragmatist would be happy, right? That's the difference between them. They are also wildly disinterested in the values. They dunk on them on the podcast uh kind of completely the famous Unchained uh headline uh crypto needs uh more builders fewer values right the to me the the kind of worst post ideological phrase now this group I think is very influenced by uh uh specific media by crypto Twitter and also the podcast I won't get into it because I can see kind of the time ticking down the short version is to just say right mimemetically my only goal this week was to introduce the term CTVC podcast industrial complex and I encourage

people to use that term as much as possible under their posts. They are on to me. They've started to follow me and they have endorsed Blockworks Extended Universe. So now I just need them to endorse CTVC podcast industrial complex and all is done. So what is the mindset that you will see on these podcasts? Well, for me it's very familiar. It's business school thinking. So I see as a business schoolification of uh uh a crypto culture. Um so I'm a business school lecturer. So that's uh you know I can see that they were business students or finance students who are now applying the the kind of thinking to our way more interesting polyentric uh cultural imaginaries right they're trying to reduce us down to business school do not let it happen right you do not want to exist in a world that's like KPMG deote

that's what we're escaping from right so how do they think they think ETH is a product right we just figure out like what ETH is as a product everything would be fine that is Ethereum's primary mission according to John C and that's not how I here. Uh so ETH is a product. Uh the Ethereum Foundation is a company, right? In this thinking, Ethereum itself is a company which has revenue, right? Real economic value, the uh yeah cursed uh term of the blockwork extended universe. Uh and then northstarism, a startup cultural term. It's from entrepreneurship and marketing. My colleagues used it for many years and I was really surprised to see it actually turn up in Airworld. So we have to reject uh product thinking, we have to reject company thinking and we definitely have to reject uh northstar thinking. if only because they're too

bland for us to live with. So don't let it happen. Okay. Um that being said, this is my things I thought about this week slide. So it doesn't really fit. It's just, you know, thrown together very very quickly. Um so the it is clear, right, that we have these post ideological blockchains at least when it comes to uh Salana. So what should we do? My position is we need to be aware that defections are coming. Nick is the canary in the coal mine. He's almost certain that people are going to begin leaving for Salena. uh over time. Also, I think we need to be aware that there are these um uh Salena super teams, right? These Salana super teams embedded in places like in Dublin where every day I go to the the hacker lounge and there's uh maybe like 10 people there.

They're all under the age of 25. They're a permanent present. They meet every Friday. Uh we need to have something like this. And then a warning from Bitcoin governance. If you want to see what's happening in governance, look at Bitcoin. It's always two years ahead of Ethereum. uh and while it's good that the Ethereum foundation is taking on this very you know robust and muscular role and so on uh that's only going to work until uh people uh kind of turn on it. So we have introduced into the into the into the sort of sphere something of the uh populist versus elitist dynamic and in Bitcoin at the moment there is currently a populist revolt against the elite and that's going to come for us at some point. Uh okay so I'll end here just by saying uh if you're writing today it would focus on the new

governance process uh a wider stakeholder set to interview. We talk about Salana and we talk about the prognosis imaginary but it being academia you can expect to see that in maybe like three years or something like that. So okay I'll leave it there. Thank you.