Cautionary Words from Vitalik Buterin: Avoid Overburdening the Ethereum Consensus

Vitalik Buterin, one of the creators of Ethereum, recently wrote a lengthy blog post expressing concerns about expanding Ethereum's consensus beyond its primary functions of validating blocks and securing the network.

He emphasized that utilizing Ethereum's network consensus for additional purposes could pose significant risks to the ecosystem and should be discouraged. Essentially, Buterin advocated for maintaining the blockchain's minimalistic approach.

Buterin acknowledged that throughout the years, various suggestions and concepts have been proposed to utilize Ethereum's social consensus for additional endeavors. These include utilizing it for price and data oracles, re-staking initiatives, and employing layer-1 soft forks to assist layer-2 projects in case of problems.

He pointed out that there is a natural inclination to expand the core functionality of the blockchain due to its significant economic influence and the large community overseeing it. However, he cautioned that each extension of the core functionality increases its vulnerability and fragility.

Buterin cautioned that certain techniques within this subset could introduce significant systemic risks to the Ethereum ecosystem, such as software bugs or deliberate 51% attacks.

One example of a high-risk scenario is the creation of ETH/USD price oracles, where holders or validators of ETH can be influenced through bribes to vote in a certain way. Disagreements in such cases may result in a situation where the money of the dissenting participants is "forked out."