I’m not sure if I agree with the mafia wording, but it does seem to me that Ethereum decision-making is rather opaque. It’s technically open, but compared to the ease by which anyone can deploy a contract onto Ethereum, it is incredibly difficult for outsiders to come in and make meaningful changes to the protocol itself, with numerous obstacles at all levels.
From the bottom, it is difficult as a newcomer to know where to start. If you have an idea, it is unclear where you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do with it. There are many different venues, none of which are official. Unless you already have a good picture of the entire system there is no way to know which one is best suited, or even if there is a suitable place at all to present your idea. One could argue that this is a good thing, since you don’t want people to make changes if they don’t know what is going on. But I think Ethereum is too big for this to be a reasonable expectation. If you have to have to understand everything before you can make any change, the sheer amount of effort required will greatly reduce the number of people willing to join.
From the top, the ultimate decision-making processes around narrative and features is also unclear. Even if everything is actually being done by rough consensus, it’s clear that in many cases this consensus is at least partially and probably primarily being done in closed meetings among insiders. This further reduces the incentive to join, because even if you put in all the effort to understand everything and go through the burnout inducing process of championing an EIP, you have no leverage on the the ultimate decision-making.
I had a suggestion in the Pectra Retrospective thread which I think could help with some of these issues.The idea is essentially to formalize the values of Ethereum into competing political factions. This sounds bad but is good because:
- Formalization means everyone knows where to go for any given issue
- Competition incentivizes insiders towards open communication and actively recruiting newcomers
- Factions means that good ideas will receive coordinated support from other faction members
- Politics encourages decentralization, since any group which becomes too powerful will become the target of an allied coalition
Based on my current understanding of Ethereum values, here is one possible list of special interest groups (SIGs) along with issues or features they might champion:
- Censorship Resistance (FOCIL)
- Decentralization (SSF)
- Moneyness (Issuance Curve, Marketing)
- Network Stability (State Expiry)
- Privacy (Dark Pools)
- Scaling (PeerDAS)
- Security (Self-Destruct, Post-Quantum)
- Ship Speed (Process Design, Documentation, Devnets)
- UX Applications (EOF)
- UX End-users (Interop)
- UX Validators (Verkle)
I believe all of these groups already exist in some form or another. EthStaker could slot directly into the UX Validators SIG. Some exist bifurcated in highbrow and lowbrow versions, like RIG and Bankless for Moneyness. Others exist more informally, perhaps as “mafias”. For example, I understand there is a customary step where EIPs are evaluated for DoS before consideration for inclusion, which could take place more transparently in a Network Stability SIG.
Under this system, there’s a very clear and open way for anyone to go about getting some idea of theirs into Ethereum. Firstly, you identify which of Ethereum’s values your idea best advances, to find the relevant SIG where you can present your idea. Other members of the SIG can discuss your idea, and help you refine it, possibly in consultation or alliance with other SIGs. If your idea is good, it gains consensus to become the priority of the SIG, which will push it through the EIP process and lobby for it to be selected for inclusion for the next fork (or if a fork isn’t required, form a subgroup to help make it a reality in whatever way is required).
The key question for fixing the social layer is asking, how can we make it easy for well-meaning outsiders to come in and make a difference?
On the other side, I want to answer that question on how to make it easy for this SIG system to arise. I think the key is on fork lobbying, either through the creation of a steering committee or by some other reformation of ACD. If being the best at meeting some specific outcomes, whether that’s voting popularity or testnet readiness or something else, becomes the way that EIPs become selected for fork inclusion, then ability-maximizing groups should naturally form. Possibly because insiders like having flexibility and rightly do not want to be beholden to the uninformed, this is not how things are currently being done. But Ethereum is too big for this to stay effective, and too important to be ineffective, and part of being more efficient is formalization and modularization.