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2023-06-22

Before Ethereum Transition: Arweave has made a better blockchain

On June 9, Vitalik, Ethereum founder, pointed out in his latest blog post, The Three Transitions, that Ethereum needs at least three changes to be sustainable:

Optimise Layer 2 extensions, especially cross-L2 communications, to save the continuously fragmented and broken L2 ecosystem. Wallet security shifts, especially the implementation of smart contract wallets, enabling users to truly enter the chain rather than get trapped in exchanges;

  • Protection of privacy, complete chain transparency is not conducive to the protection of user personal privacy, can take technical measures similar to ZK or change dependent addresses for transactions such as new measures.

It can be found that the blockchain has become a real infrastructure on the chain after the "small payment" concept of Bitcoin entered the era of Ethereum "financial infrastructure", which means that Ethereum has become the real chain infrastructure, and no public chain, dapp, NFT or Layer 2 can not completely bypass Ethereum for eco-construction.

On the other hand, Ethereum has come to a moment of self-innovation, high fees, multiple but broken layer 2 and years of account abstraction and fragmentation plans, which all indicate the difficulties in engineering practice being not as simple as theoretically good idea.

Difficulty of L2 cross chain

In conventional cognition, the L2 of the public chain is a dependent sub-chain, but here two important information points are missed:

  1. Any public chain can build its own L2 sub-chain without requiring specific restrictions on Ethereum.

  2. Only the Ethereum L2 chain has real economic significance, and other public chains do not face serious demand problems.

This resulted in Ethereum choosing L2 as the main option for its extension, such as the high-performance public chain such as Solana, which has also caused its many stagnations, but has not developed the same-scale L2 ecosystem.

After Ethereum developed a unique variety of L2 ecosystems, it has generated a serious "cross-chain" crisis, and any L2 has the compatibility and communication capabilities of the ethereum main chain as a development focus, which also gave rise to ethereal compatibility of various levels.

Cross-chain and communication between L2s, on the other hand, became difficult.

Because the technical principles and compatibility of L2 types are inconsistent, there are approximately three ways to communicate and bridge assets between them:

  1. To exchange assets through CEX, which requires CEX access to both;

  2. Through cross-chain bridges, this requires support for both sides.

  3. Through the Ethereum main network, arbitrary cross-chain bridges first communicate with the main network and then transfer assets to other L2.

It is precisely the mutual communication between arbitrary L2s that is extremely difficult, and the ecological rupture already requires the compulsory bonding of external forces.

From the very beginning, Arweave itself was an arbitrary, publicly transparent permanent storage network, and the storage-based consensus paradigm SCPs could already be sub-chained without loss chain confirmation, the SCP paradigm being open protocols and components, without the need for arbitrary public chain addition and re-support, as long as it complies with the scalability theory of SCP, can be implemented as part of the arweave to specific functionality.

For instance, everPay, a unified payment protocol, is not exclusively restricted to the Arweave ecosystem's PST format token. It has the ability to integrate with Ethereum, BNB, and other EVM-compatible chains, as well as the Boka ecosystem. By leveraging Arweave's permanent storage feature, everPay ensures that it adheres to the open L2 standard of Arweave, making it possible for any project that meets this standard to develop its own application.

Ethereum's L2 challenges stem from the lack of standardisation. Currently, there are numerous L2 projects based on the OPR and ZKR paradigms, each with its own distinct format. Achieving long-term interoperability seems both anticipated and unattainable due to this fragmentation.

Multiple accounts, one identity

The SEC initiated a significant investigation primarily to determine whether the U.S. station is truly independent from the international station, both in terms of human resources and financial autonomy. As the SEC makes accusations and the coin responds, the situation has become increasingly convoluted, making it challenging to discern who is at fault or who is involved in a potentially manipulative scenario.

But one thing to be sure is that large-scale users, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, are more accustomed to putting crypto assets into exchange accounts rather than depositing them into the chain. We must note that so far, national regulators’ investigations into cryptocurrencies have been highly focused on exchanges and token securities properties, and less on specific DeFi projects, with Tornado Cash as an exception.

This actually exposes a rather embarrassing fact: there is insufficient user liquidity on the chain. The main cause of this problem is the fragmented and cumbersome nature of the account system. For instance, within the Ethereum ecosystem, the practice of creating separate wallets for each application or creating wallets separately has been a contentious matter.

In addition to the help words, recovery methods, MPCs, hosting and non-hosting, making the creation and use of the wallet itself an extremely painful process, with this corresponding, the solution idea of the Ethereum ecosystem is the abstract solution to implement the smart contract wallet functionality.

As the name implies, the smart contract wallet is a wallet with the execution of smart contracts, unlike the previous EOA wallet, the Smart Contract wallet can have the function of storing and managing assets at the same time, and any complex application can be simplified to a clear way of operation.

It can be said that smart contracts are payments, entirely user-centered, from the user’s perspective to manage the flow and use of assets, rather than in turn to domesticate users from the technology stack on the chain.

While EverID has been gradually implemented, it will be combined with the existing EverPay multi-linking capability. EverID can not only access different wallets of different chains, but also support traditional mailboxes, mobile phone number login methods, and can support the ability to manage Web3 assets with Web2 accounts.

EverID itself is not limited to the Arweave or Ethereum system, the chain-on-line, Web2 and Web3 will truly be fused together, on this basis, the security of the wallet will have real meaning, and the bonded real identity will help to build the foundation of social recovery, especially the introduction of the Web2 identity system component that can more accurately identify the personal true identity.

Identity shouldn’t be a barrier to Web3’s escape from chain applications, and ease of use is the only way forward, and EverID will explore this more and hope to be more bound to mainstream assets including the Ethereum ecosystem.

Decentralisation is the way of protecting privacy

The transparency of the blockchain is intended by decentralisation, and the resulting personal data will also be fully exposed to the chain, if it is the Ethereum main chain or Arweave, this record could even be permanent.

As personal activities increasingly migrate to the blockchain and companies or institutions utilize public chains for their operations, three primary privacy challenges arise, distinguishing them from public events or blockchain data:

Personal, social, identity and other information that needs to be seriously false but the content does not need to be completely public, such as P2P communication or private chat content;

  • DeFi transaction information, which needs to be confirmed by the block, but the need for anti-MEV consistently exists, along with how to submit the public chain without exposing the transaction details is a challenge; Institutions that do not want to be seen as big whales, face instantaneous tracking, especially some government, traditional enterprises, which require a certain degree of privacy transactions.

Of course, existing technologies such as ZK, AI or ZKML can protect privacy to a certain extent, but we should note that there are still some projects to be planned or in the launch phase, such as Worldcoin’s iris recognition for DID construction to identify individual unique identity information.

But in the current phase of data analysis on the chain, we see that Nansen and Dune are gradually introducing AI capabilities to enhance the ability of more users to analyze the chains. Dune has been practically testing the LLM (big model) for automated writing of SQL statements.

The transparency of the chain can not be completely eliminated, otherwise it will cause the re-emergence of centralised institutions, the two-way transparent information is the foundation of the blockchain, which contains the meaning that you can do evil, but the chains remain.

EverVision has always believed that decentralisation is not a goal, but a means of achieving unlicensed trust, so it really matters how to arbitrary access and exit open markets that run on their own and thus create a truly decentralised open world.

Under the no-license trust logic, personal privacy is naturally protected, combined with the utility of Ever ID, users can fully authenticate with Web2 identity, and with Web3 identity management assets, which are inherently unified, as long as your behaviour is recognized on the chain, the validity of this behaviour will be perpetuated by Arweave.

For example, Permaswap wants to introduce more LPs (liquidity providers), the logic behind which lies in increasing the degree of decentralisation of the network, and thanks to the characteristics of no sliding points and atomic transactions, which is inherent in the anti-MEV DEX. As long as it can be accessed, it can be traded as soon as it is confirmed.

The conclusion

At the time of Ethereum's transformation, what is required is a shift towards simplicity in mindset. Earlier, Vitalik had emphasized the importance of maintaining consensus simplicities. However, the three transitions currently underway are not small tasks that can be completed overnight. As we move forward, we eagerly anticipate observing the future of blockchain.

Being simple enough, such as SCP and Ever ID, is everVison’s consistent mindset, and to really do this, you must be honest, handing the chain over to the chains, and returning the individual to the individual.

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