Bankless co-founder: EVM equivalent era is coming, will unlock the next stage of Ethereum
Compile: Amber
Compile: Amber
The EVM equivalent helps Ethereum's second-layer Rollup ecology "evolve" into an adaptable and responsive layer that will unlock the next stage of Ethereum.
The DeFi Summer of 2020 hit the scale limit of Ethereum. Since then, the network effects of the EVM have diverged in many different directions. New L1s, and even many L2s, break the EVM standard to break through performance bottlenecks.
But now, the era of EVM equivalence has arrived, a new Cambrian explosion of innovation is coming, and we only need EVM equivalence to unlock it.
What is the EVM equivalent
The EVM equivalence is exactly the same as the specification of the EVM. The equivalent design concept of EVM is to build an Optimistic Rollup based on Ethereum's "minimum dif".
The EVM equivalent extends the properties of Ethereum to its L2. It blurs the line between the stop of Ethereum L1 and the start of L2 Rollup. This is the difference between "scaling on Ethereum" and "scaling on Ethereum itself".
Optimistic Rollup, a perfect clone of the EVM, not only shares the security level of the Ethereum mainnet, but actually shares every aspect of its network effects. Other L2 design structures do not have the privileged access to all of Ethereum's network effects.
EVM compatibility is rigid. Either optimize for generality by adhering to Ethereum standards (thus choosing the same standards as everyone else), or build something completely different, optimized specifically for your use case (e.g. ZK-rollups).
In order to scale the full power of Ethereum to L2, we need more than just EVM compatibility. What we need is an EVM equivalent.
compatible and equivalent
When the Optimism team last yearIntroducing the EVM Equivalent, they describe the technical differences between equivalence and compatibility.
Rollups are hailed as the savior of scaling, because we can run Uniswap on it. However the earliest rollups were implemented by completely recreating Uniswap with custom code on top of custom rollups. This is obviously not a good enough solution.
The network effects of the EVM extend far beyond Solidity.a large number of auxiliary toolsBringing superpowers to Ethereum developers. Because these tools also run on the EVM standard, they solve the cumbersome requirement of having to rebuild entirely new proprietary code. With the support of EVM equivalence, we only need to simply copy and paste to refactor an existing application on one layer.
EVM is a city
“Open source code is like a city. It’s created from the bottom up, with contributions from many developers who see a problem and build a solution. Over time, the city will grow stronger and stronger.” Efficient. Simply put, the EVM chain is like rebuilding Paris in Las Vegas, that is, rebuilding the existing prosperity in another land.”
Open source software is a public product, maintained and updated by its respective community.
Developers who use open source software encounter all kinds of bugs while using it, and some developers spend time fixing those bugs and then lobby the community to accept their research. If the community deems it valuable, their contributions are merged. A new standard is created, and the usefulness and robustness of the software increases with it.
Like a fledgling city, builders come to produce what the surrounding community needs and values. Shared resources and utilities are produced, and since it's code, it never decays. This is a one-way street of value growth as long as everyone works together. Each developer builds in their own direction and discovers their specific contribution to the collective. Over time, the combined contributions of thousands of developers will shape a highly robust public good.
Geth is a good example, Geth has built a powerful application by absorbing meaningful contributions from Ethereum developers.
EVM Squad
A concept is introduced here, "bicycle squad" is a team composed of road cyclists. Cyclists in a group save energy by riding behind other cyclists. Riding in a sufficiently experienced team, the resistance experienced by the rider can be reduced to 5%-10%.
In other words, if you want to go faster in a short amount of time, go it alone. But if you want to go further, go together.
The larger the team, the higher the efficiency and speed. Air resistance is distributed over a larger group. As the size of the group increases, so does the efficiency of the group. Being in the middle of the team is basically a no-brainer. The leader of the team needs to be replaced frequently, because the leader bears all the resistance of the headwind. After those who have more physical reserves change to the leader position, the speed of the entire team will be maintained at a higher level.
The development speed of the open source community is bound to be faster than that of individuals or centralized small teams. The reason our industry moves so fast is because it is a collaborative flywheel. We build on each other's success, and when one of us moves into a cutting-edge field, they bring us all into it.
Copy application layer
Copy application layer
Crafting an L2 ecosystem comparable to the EVM is critical to preserving the network effects of composability and interoperability.
The EVM equivalent of Rollup allows instant copy+pasting of codebases across chains. Development and innovation on a single EVM-equivalent rollup can be transferred seamlessly to any other EVM-equivalent ORU, or to Ethereum itself. Since everything is developed on the EVM standard, the network effects of L1 are extended to L2, and innovations on L2 reverberate throughout the ecosystem.
If you are an open source developer and you want your code to be widely used, you naturally want to use the EVM equivalent ORU, because your code is immediately compatible with all other EVM equivalent ORUs. If you write the code once, but it works seamlessly across 1000 compatible chains, then the value you just generated is much greater.
EVM equivalence takes EVM network effects to a whole new level.
replication protocol layer
replication protocol layer
These EVM network effects don’t just apply to Ethereum’s application layer, it also applies to the protocol layer itself.
Because the ORU equivalent of the EVM differs little from Ethereum, they provide Ethereum with a testbed for new EIPs in an actual production environment.
Right now, EIPs are tested on the Ethereum testnet. EIPs were tested multiple times on the testnet to make sure there would be no issues when it was finally integrated into Ethereum L1. And this is always risky, because the testnet and Ethereum do not "minimize Dif". The implementation of EIP in Goerli or Koven is different from the implementation of EIP in Ethereum. The difference is that the scale and importance of economic activities on Ethereum cannot be imitated by the testnet. There are always some "unknowns" when implementing EIP in Ethereum.
The EVM equivalent provides a new solution.
When an EIP is successfully implemented on an EVM-equivalent ORU, it provides strong guarantees to the base chain that the same EIP can be successfully integrated without errors. The EVM-equivalent ORU provides a live production environment with real economic activity and real capital for the testing of the EIP. EIPs can be tested at the ORU level without the risk of something breaking and affecting other parts of the overall system.
When L2 generally adopts the same EIP, it signals to Ethereum L1 that it is wanted by the community and that it can be safely integrated into L1.
The EVM equivalent of ORU enables Ethereum to sense the urgency of participants on its L2, which can make each L2 a tentacles that adapt to the wishes of its users. Because each ORU is its own sovereign economy, it will implement various EIPs independently and asynchronously, separate from the rest of the ecosystem, based on the needs and desires of its users.
Over time, the best EIP will dominate the L2 ORU landscape as more and more independent ORUs see value in the same EIP. When an EIP dominates the entire ORU landscape, it will signal to Ethereum L1 that it is a good EIP and is safe to implement at the L1 protocol layer.
There will be many forks of Optimism on Ethereum. When they both accept the same EIP, it will signal to the master L1 that this EIP is desirable and safe.
Briefly summarize the meaning of EVM equivalence
EVM equivalent helps Ethereum break free from the shackles of L1, Ethereum becomes able to extend outward to the secondary market, and the dividing line between Ethereum L1 and EVM equivalent L2 will also become very blurred. In other words, the definition of L1 or L2 will become less important, because all of this is "just" Ethereum.
Horror vacui
"Nature abhors a vacuum - Aristotle"
Nature is good at filling in the gaps. The better an organism evolves to fit its environment, the more space it fills. Animals consume food and reproduce to the maximum extent their environment allows. All plants are manifestations of fractals, because fractals are algorithms for maximizing surface area. The increased surface area of the plant increases its ability to capture sunlight on the leaves and obtain nutrients from the roots.
last mile problem
The last mile refers to the last leg of the journey, including the movement of people and goods from a transportation hub to their final destination. The last mile describes the difficult final part of the journey of people and packages from a hub to their final destination. Some of the challenges of last mile transportation include minimizing costs, ensuring transparency, increasing efficiency, and improving infrastructure.
Nature is really good at tackling the last mile. This is a natural consequence of "survival of the fittest"; being able to replicate and multiply the best organism to fill the void it's in.
Even within a single organism, fractals are fundamental patterns that increase the scale and efficiency of organisms. The lungs are responsible for capturing oxygen and distributing it into the blood; the circulatory system is responsible for distributing this oxygen and other nutrients to the farthest reaches of the organism. A fractal is a structure in which each substructure has the same properties as the overall structure. Fractals can be thought of as never-ending patterns, and reproducibility and reproducibility are what make fractals fractals.
Only replicable and reproducible structures can effectively fill the voids in nature. Crypto is a huge void, and there is still a lot to build. But to fill all these gaps with new structures, we need systems that can be replicated and reproduced.
The EVM equivalence yields the basis needed to produce these properties.
With the EVM's equivalent of a Rollup ecosystem, Ethereum can replicate and reproduce at breakneck speed, zeroing in on its users' desires and updating its code to reflect those desires.
Each L2 can develop in its own unique direction, specializing in whatever it wants to specialize in. A successful L2, if it has many users and a lot of value, will signal to other L2s that it has discovered something of value. We all know that the cryptocurrency industry is really "efficient". Once anything is proven to be useful, it will be plagiarized and copied.
As long as L2 finds a new source of value, this source of value can be replicated and shared throughout the ecosystem, and eventually brought back to the center of the ecosystem.
EIPs are the new genes
The book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins discusses that each gene of an organism is the smallest unit of life, whose inherent self-interest in its own preservation and reproduction provides the underlying pattern on which all life depends.
Good genes survive and bad genes die.
As an organism evolves and adapts, the genes that make it healthy spread throughout the species over time through replication and reproduction. Beneficial random mutations in a single organism help it survive and thrive better than others, and as a result, the gene goes from being present in only one instance to being present in all possible instances because it is a good gene.
In the world of modular Ethereum, EIPs are the new DNA.
Compared with the sentence just now, the simple summary is: good EIPs will spread effectively; bad EIPs will disappear.
Ethereum is a responsive and adaptive system, the ORU equivalent of the EVM allows new genes to be implemented at the edge of the organism first, and then after this new EIP proves its feasibility, the EIP is propagated outward to other ORUs. If the EIP is good enough, it will go all the way back to the beating heart of Ethereum: L1.
Ethereum becomes an organism capable of responding and adapting to its environment, even as its environment changes over time. The genome of an organism is fixed from the beginning, and Ethereum has the ability to invent and integrate new genes as needed in order to keep up with the changing needs of the world.
Discover the value in the EVM equivalent paradigm, and transform this value into a public product, which can be shared in the entire Ethereum ecosystem, rather than being bound to a specific L2 to show value.
Retroactive Public Goods: Building Infrastructure for the Entire Ecosystem
Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF)Will take Ethereum from a system that responds to its users to one that can take proactive action.
Optimism is pioneering a new model of funding public goods that injects Silicon Valley-style financial incentives into projects that build public goods.
Revenue generated from L2 blockspace fees goes directly to innovators and founders who build useful things for Optimism L2. The RPGF puts money into the future, empowers public good builders, and guarantees that if they build useful public goods, there will be money waiting for them.
Influence = value
The combination of RPGF and EVM equivalence means that after Optimism L2 builds something useful, other components of the entire EVM equivalence ecosystem can be used directly.
Blockspace sales on Optimism become not only Optimism L2 infrastructure, but all L2 infrastructure, which will eventually become part of Ethereum itself.
The organic combination of RPGF and EVM equivalence provides us with an effective solution to the "tragedy of the commons", and this innovation is not only applicable to Optimism, or even not only to L2 or Ethereum, but can solve all problems in the world. A major pain point.
Step 1: Fund public goods on Optimism;
Step 2: Extend these free public goods to all other L2s;
Step 3: Integrate these public goods into Ethereum;
Step 4: Push the influence of public goods to the world;
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