Behind the skyrocketing price of Ethereum, how does governance work?
Editor's Note: This article comes fromCrypto Valley Live (ID: cryptovalley)Crypto Valley Live (ID: cryptovalley)
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, Author: Micah Zoltu, translation: Li Hanbo, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.
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User - A person who transacts with Ethereum. This includes people using dapps, people sending/receiving coins, etc.
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User delegation - Typically, users delegate their decision-making authority to a third party. Infura and centralized exchanges are two very common principals. Mainstream dapps are another common type of user delegation, where users go to the chain of their favorite dapp. When we talk about the user making a decision, many times it will be delegated to other places, but in the end it is the user's decision.
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process
Different clients are now optional for developers, but in the past, client developers expressed their desire to remain compatible with each other, so they usually sent a representative to participate in the communication, trying to coordinate with other client developers.
Eventually, each client team will release as they see fit client updates that will (ideally) be compatible with other clients and have the same forked block number as other clients. If clients publish compatible code, sharing a fork block trigger, then clients will be able to communicate with each other when run by users.
Once a client is released, the client developer and/or their supporters will make an announcement to users, who will choose whether to update the client, or possibly switch clients. Users will typically delegate this decision to a third party, such as Infura or a centralized exchange, but end users can decide what and where they want to trade. In the case of delegated voting, they can often switch providers if they disagree with their delegator (this is a bit trickier with custodian delegation, as the custodian may refuse to give your money to a chain the custodian disagrees with superior).
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There is no single decision maker here. Anyone can publish a client, announce a client, fork a client (they are all open source), etc., and users can choose to use whichever client they want.
The core developers of each client have a particular set of personal concerns that they typically express to other client developers. Things will go well if all client developers agree to develop the same feature and they will coordinate on the release schedule.
If client developers don't agree on what features to release or when, some of them may develop, announce, and roll out different feature sets. We've seen this happen before with ETH/ETC forks, not all client developers agreed on how to proceed, so we ended up with two different chains maintained by different groups.
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How to handle disagreements?
None of the core developers thought it was a good idea, and they all decided not to integrate it into the client they maintained.
Some core developers thought it was a good idea but were unwilling to fork, while others thought it was a bad idea and were willing to fork.
Some core developers thought it was a good idea and were willing to fork, while some thought it was a bad idea and were unwilling to fork.
Some core developers thought it was a good idea and were willing to fork, while others thought it was bad and were willing to fork."All core developers agree that this is a great idea."In the case of 1 and 5, things went really well.
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, then the side with stronger beliefs may win.
In case of 4, we have a fork like ETH/ETC.
secondary titlehttps://ethresear.chAs a user of Ethereum, you can choose whether to run a given client, which means that if you think the change is bad, you can choose not to upgrade at all. You're also actually encouraged to try and convince others (where appropriate) to run a different client with you if you think it's best to do so.
If you are technically minded, you can also participate by pitching new technical ideas to the core developers (e.g. via
). You can also participate in client development by joining an existing team, maintaining your own fork, or building a new client from scratch.
secondary title"How do developers decide what code to write?"Every Ethereum client developer has his own motivations, some well known and some kept secret. Some of these motives are financial (eg, they are sponsored by others who have their own motives) and some are altruistic (eg, they want to build a more censorship-resistant future).
