EIP 3074 is unsafe, unnecessary, puts user funds at risk while fragmenting UX, liquidity and the wallet stack

EIPs
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A few (very distant) observations (building on the theme here in terms of security and paths to endgame):

  1. Ethereum’s executing a rollup centric roadmap that prioritizes moving end users to L2 and architecting L1 to best support this transition.

  2. A key value prop of rollups is that they’re not constrained by innovations on L1. We’re seeing this trend strength with the addition of RollCall and the RIP process and we expect to see innovation on L2+ outpace iteration on L1.

  3. Given that, and given that there’s consensus that the best canonical endstate is native AA, it seems like it’s worth at least considering what is the best shot to sprint to native AA (and separately EOA migration) on L2.

  4. I think 3074 is useful, but way more so on L1 where the cost benefits and legacy community are both substantial, than L2 where it feels more like a compromise/afterthought versus the best architecture in a vacuum.

  5. Points (1) and (4) seem potentially a bit incongruent where Ethereum itself is focusing on supporting end user adoption of rollups but the EIP process in this case prioritizes existing users on Ethereum. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but to some of the points above, I wish there had been a broader discussion on priorities, tradeoffs, and target endgames before an inclusion announcement.

  6. Net its not necessarily a bad outcome wrt to 3074 (there are some noted synergies, still thinking about how this should fit in to the evolution of user accounts on rollups in the long term) but something that might be worth flagging as EIPs and RIPs continue to evolve separately with perhaps different focuses.

High level, I think this EIP doesn’t support the core L1 roadmap and signifies a lack of alignment on what L1 Ethereum is trying to compete on. I think the ecosystem-wide answer is, at least currently, as a settlement (I understand there’s some nuance with that term) layer, and with 4844 and the move to full danksharding, a DA layer for rollups. My interpretation of “rollup centric” is that we shouldn’t be optimizing for e.g. user swaps on L1. The customers of L1s are rollups and the featureset of L1 should prioritize exclusively that. None of the features mentioned in the “ideal endstate” really optimize for end user activity at scale. My main concern is because Ethereum is trying to compete on everything, it will end up not doing any one thing as well. This might be controversial, but at this point I think L1 Ethereum should actually actively dissuade end user onboarding and actively promote user activity migration to rolllups. The amount of complexity and dependencies being baked into the system is high and split brain between rollup optimization and user optimization won’t help that out (https://www.hyrumslaw.com/). Trying to compete for end users on L1 misses the boat of building global scale permissionless byzantine resistant systems. Because of that, I actually think 3074 would have been a lot less controversial as an RIP, but candidly either way, it actually feels premature. There’s almost certainly a lot of throwaway work and a degree of settlement at a local maximum with no clear and viable path towards the desired endgame. Let certain more agile networks differentiate on that and have the market drive that demand (Polygon’s already working on an implementation, why not just see if it works as expected there first?).

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This makes sense and would probably give EIP 3074 campaigners pause if it was really about user onboarding and UX on L1.

I’ve argued elsewhere there’s a simpler explanation for why none of these arguments seem to land: that EIP 3074 is an example of a special interest protocol lobbying effort designed to benefit Consensys/Metamask.

EIP 3074 was shot down in 2021. It only regained traction after Matt the author moved from Consensys into the Geth team and started leveraging Geth’s position as the majority execution client to social engineer support from the other “core devs”. Other execution client devs don’t want an adversarial relationship with Geth. Behind the scenes Matt discourages work on native AA, speaking on behalf of the Geth team saying they won’t support it. In public he laments how we’re not making progress on UX because “core devs” don’t care about users. It’s quite cynical.

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They have cheap gas only because they are so under-utilized. You cannot count on gas being worthless because spam isn’t actually free, at least not for the execution layer.

Core devs know each other but they aren’t exactly friends and they don’t agree on priorities. Their common interest is in not wasting their own time.

It is easy to believe conspiracy theories about your opponents. Many Ethereum developers (including myself) are ex-Consensys because it was a huge company. This doesn’t mean they have a huge interest in advancing Consensys’ interests, even if they have stock. This is because Consensys is internally decentralized to the extent that there is little coordination or contact between projects. Consensys is simply too toxic and unfocused to have members of one team advancing another team’s interests, never mind spies infiltrating core development. lightclient is advancing 3074 because he believes it is good, not because he is a puppet for his former employer.

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I agree. So does working on things Matt says Geth won’t support count as wasting their time?

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That could prove why an EIP was not included, but not why an EIP was included.

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Have you seen @MrSilly’s comments on the Protecting the EIP process from special interests + examples & case study thread? William’s comment–if it’s actually ad hominem–pales in comparison to what you see there. And that’s not counting the number of tweets I’ve seen suggesting EIP-3074’s authors are mercenaries operating on behalf of a wealthy overlord.

I get that ERC-4337 infrastructure providers are uncertain about what EIP-3074 means for their business model and operations going forward. That’s a legitimate concern. But it’s disingenuous to have that much reactionary comments on the proposal from various people–many of whom are trying to paint EIP-3074 as 100% bad because it doesn’t necessarily align with ERC-4337.

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As someone who’s worked at Consensys, I can confirm most (if not all) of the statements here. I think people on the outside look at Consensys and see a huge, monolithic megacorp operating like some sentient entity and moving chess pieces all over the board. But it’s far from the truth–you only need to see how many teams are there to understand how difficult it is coordinate the collusion @MrSilly is describing. (Pretty sure I met less than 10% of the company’s employees at the time I left.)

A decent number of people have the same notion of the EF, too. If you don’t see the EF as a loosely organized group of individuals, and perceive it as some centralized organization instead, then it makes sense to say the EF is coordinating to interfere with the EIP process (as some have indeed said in the past)…even if that’s untrue.

Besides, people talk about Matt/Sam holding CSI stocks so much–even when former employees are filing lawsuits to make sure their equity retains its value. Not sure what to make of that information–but I think it can at least (rightfully) dilute the strong assumption that the promise of equity is enough to get core developers to play secret agents.

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  1. Isn’t it easier to herd everyone to the door you want when you’ve locked the others?

  2. You think other client devs want the majority client on their bad side?

If the majority client can in practice veto EIPs by refusing to implement them, anyone that hopes to one day get an EIP included better be very careful about displeasing them. That’s a lot of power to trust to a tiny group of devs. They’ve earned our respect as client developers, not as Ethereum’s governance overlords. Maybe we shouldn’t argue with them too much on client optimisations, but as soon as they start throwing their weight around with contentious changes to security models and the UX roadmap I believe we have reasons to be very worried.

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That’s the beauty of incentives, people can coordinate themselves around them. You don’t need to believe in some massive conspiracy to take the influence of financial incentives seriously. What I’ve heard from my ex-Consensys friends is almost everyone that worked for the company was underpaid and the company relied strongly on equity to retain them. The promise was that something would work and you’d get exposure to it. Unfortunately Consensys failed at almost everything. The only success stories were Metamask and to a lesser degree Infura.

If you also left Consensys with equity, you stand to gain financially from Metamask’s success, as do all the other current and former Consensus employees with equity. I wish I could find someone to explain to me what is so great about EIP 3074 who doesn’t have that conflict of interest. It should be possible to find someone like that, but so far if there is one consistent feature of all the EIP 3074 supporters / apologists I’ve seen so far is that they have upside in Metamask.

Look, your conflicts of interests shouldn’t prevent all of you from proposing improvements or participating in the discussion, but to the protect the integrity of Ethereum and credible neutrality of the governance process you should at least avoid abstain from voting on it in ACD. I doubt the money is worth your reputations. You think I’m the only person who is concerned? Most people just prefer to stay away from the drama. It’s unpleasant. You risk making enemies for life. Not getting that next job. You’d rather just be working on a research problem or code, hoping someone else sorts it out. I was one of them.

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While there are plenty of effective counter-arguments to MrSilly’s points, I don’t believe this is one of them.

While it’s true that Consensys may have been unable to internally coordinate their teams in the past (or present), it’s illogical to trust that a corporation won’t attempt to align their internal teams to maximize their profit in the future.

It’s particularly illogical to use the “Don’t worry, Consensys teams don’t coordinate.” argument to counter arguments that are specifically focused on the power that Consensys could acquire if they actually coordinated. “Consensys didn’t coordinate well in the past.” is not a rebuttal to “If Consensys coordinated, they would have a monopoly around ‘X’.”

It’s also just not true. Metamask’s default RPC is Infura. SMG (a newly acquired Consensys company) is helping with OFAs that involve both.

Instead, effective rebuttals should focus on:

  • Why Consensys is unable to internally coordinate their teams.
  • Why Consensys’s inability to coordinate is expected to persist.
  • Why coordination of internal operations would not lead to an anti-competitive outcome.

And let’s be clear - Consensys isn’t the only company that warrants a microscope. There are multiple companies whose relationship with the authors is relevant context for any EIP that directly impacts their operations:

  • For an EIP that affects liquid staking, it’d be relevant to know whether or not the proposers / supporters work for Lido.
  • For an EIP that affects slashing, it’d be relevant to know whether or not the proposers / supporters work for EigenLayer.
  • For an EIP that affects PBS, it’d be relevant to know whether or not the proposers / supporters work for Flashbots.
  • For an EIP that affects oracles, it’d be relevant to know whether or not the proposers / supporters work for Chainlink.

Note that I’m not saying that EIPs should be rejected if they’re proposed by companies that can benefit from them.

I am saying that the employment / interests of the authors adds important context to the EIP, and that this context warrants special consideration.

As an outsider, I’m also very concerned by the tribalism that’s manifesting here. Pointing out conflicts of interest is a good thing that is necessary for a transparent and fair governance. The demonization of those who voice their concerns - regardless of whether or not those concerns are valid - is a strong disincentive for others to speak out. I personally have had multiple people message me their support but who are afraid to say anything publicly, largely because they directly interact with or depend on Consensys in one form or another.

I understand that many of you have known each other for the better part of a decade and have spent time working together at the EF, Consensys, or other companies that have existed since the start of Ethereum. Many of you are “Ethereum OGs” and you’ve developed trust for each other over a long period of time. Many of you have loud, respected voices that assist in propagating your views and your trust assumptions. But trust assumptions shouldn’t be propagated - just because you trust your friend doesn’t mean that everyone should, which is why I implore you to avoid the instinct to “close ranks.” I implore you to avoid treating those concerned about the actions of your trusted friends as hostile, even when the concerned individual’s views are entirely unfounded.

Currently, voicing concern about a Consensys monopoly is political suicide. The concerned individual is painted as a hostile conspiracy theorist by several prominent names in the Ethereum community. This fundamentally undermines the whistleblower’s ability to build the relationships needed to succeed in DeFi.

We must fix this. The current environment, where people are afraid to voice their concerns about powerful companies, is not sustainable or desirable. From the outside looking in, it definitely isn’t congruent with what I thought Ethereum’s values were.

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It’s actually worse because even participating in that discussion is too scary for most community members. Most just want to keep their heads down and stay out of “the drama”. Wish I realized how true this was when I originally on protecting the EIP process from special interests. In retrospect, it may have been more productive to post separately regarding the specific concerns around EIP 3074 being promoted by those who had conflicts of interests. That way community members that believe we should make improvements to the EIP process could talk about that without worrying too much they’re making powerful enemies.

This is very true. I took a break from posting on EM after account abstraction devs reached out to me and asked me to stop criticizing EIP 3074 or the underhanded methods used to campaign for it. Why would they ask me to shut up? Because they’re afraid some powerful “core devs” will hold them guilty by association. “The core devs are the governance team. We are secondary”

I took a break for a couple weeks, but with all due respect to the account abstraction team, I believe the problems with ACD & governance are upstream of the specific dispute around account abstraction and are possibly more consequential. Better to hack at the root than hack at the leaves.

So at the risk of pissing everyone off even more I felt like I had to explain why I strongly disagree with this common misconception that client devs are “the governance team” or that it is a good idea for them to have any special powers to settle disputes: