Author: Jaleel Jialiu

Vitalik It feels bad.

When he heard people and venture capital companies on crypto Twitter tell him that a PVP KOL that makes more than 99% of users lose money The gambler casino is the crypto industry Vitalik feels bad when it comes to the best market fit that can be obtained, and when it comes to something better, it is seen as "condescending and elitist".

When those who know nothing about the internal operations of the Ethereum Foundation, tell him who should kick out of the organization, who should come in, and Vitalik feels bad when counting on him to complete all these adjustments in two weeks.

2024 has been a tough year for all Ethereum teams and communities. The community's dissatisfaction has fallen into a periodic cycle of anger, which will explode from time to time, and the community's memes of mocking ETH prices have also been updated one after another.

In addition to Vitalik, there is another person who also feels bad.

That is Aya Miyaguchi, former executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. A year ago, Aya proposed to Vitalik the idea of ​​transferring from executive director to foundation chairman. This idea was implemented today. Vitalik officially announced that Aya was officially promoted to chairman of the Ethereum Foundation. This made the Ethereum community very unsatisfied.

The controversial new chairman of the Ethereum Foundation

In fact, over the past year, Aya has been criticized by the Ethereum community, in Ethereum Both the Chinese and English districts of the Fangfang are quite controversial.

In the past year, Solana, the biggest killer of Ethereum, has been killed. In addition to the founder Toly, who has been working hard for various "solana casino culture memes" In addition, the work of Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, has also been recognized by the community, such as proposing the PayFi concept of "using on-chain pledge interest-generating payment off-chain real transactions", held many extremely high-quality hackathon competitions, and invested in it. Many SolanaEcological quality projects.

In the eyes of many people in the Ethereum community, Aya has almost no "results" in the seven years she served as executive director of the Ethereum Foundation.

"Hold to do a job that is not qualified for 7 years without doing anything Work can be paid," the traders and KOLs, led by CoinMamba, in the English community, have the deepest resentment towards her.

They even tried to let Aya leave through public pressure: they published "The day when Aya left was Ethereum's Liberation Day", "The ETH within two weeks when Aya left It will be a new high, "We continue to put pressure on her, she will resign." Some even irrationally abused and died threats to her.

If you still remember Vitalik's various defense-breaking Twitter periods during the Chinese New Year, such as the abstract terms of cc Milady, and even thought about leaving Ethereum. The period of speaking in good spirits was during that time when Vitalik was under great public pressure from the community.

Faced with the clamor of CoinMamba and others to "fire Aya", Vitalik seemed a little broken and posted seven or eight tweets in a row, saying that "it decided to be Ethereum Fund." The only person who can lead the team is me, Milady! ", "I hope everyone doesn't speak too harshly, Milady!", "The people who say insults are all demons, Milady!", "Milady!"

Aya's 7 years did nothing?

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Ethereum ICO, and Aya has served in the Ethereum Foundation for 7 years.

Aya Before, the executive director of the Ethereum Foundation was also an Asian, named Ming Chan, who has many years of experience in IT and management consulting. During the three years from 2015 to 2018, the Foundation’s daily operations were handled, allowing its standardized management to ensure that technology development and community operations were carried out smoothly under the legal and regulatory framework.

Since 2018, Aya After replacing Ming Chan as the new executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, he reiterated the responsibilities of the Ethereum Foundation.

"It is a bit unobjective to say that Aya has done nothing in the years she has been in office." Lida is a protocol researcher in the Ethereum ecosystem. She talks about rhythm BlockBeats said: "The most specific work that can be expressed is the ETH Devcon or Devconnect conference held every year, which is inseparable from Aya's efforts. And it can be seen that ETH activities have spread all over the world over the years, to the world. Community activities in various places provide funding without additional conditions. ”

In addition, the foundation has the responsibility to maintain an executive client, Geth, host Various conference calls (such as All hosted by Tim Beiko Core Devs (ACD), All Devs Consensus (ACDC) hosted by Alex Stokes, etc.), conducts research on various Ethereum technologies, roadmap formulation, etc.

"However, after the adjustments over the past few years, the Ethereum research team is basically an independent department in the foundation, developing a roadmap and having dozens of jobs Developed in parallel by different teams, doing Reddit AMA twice a year, etc.,” Lida said.

In the latest transfer of members of the Ethereum Foundation, we can also see that the research team has undergone a relatively large reorganization, in addition to dividing the part into 5 categories In addition to the research team, Stokes and Barnabe jointly serve as co-head of the Ethereum Foundation research team.

"Speaking of this, in addition to the fact that Aya's work results are not obvious, everyone has a relatively large criticism of her, that she does not have much management experience. "Lida said that unlike Ming Chan's previous experience in IT and management, Aya was a Japanese high school teacher who worked in the education industry for more than ten years.

Aya has a little "unworthy" when she realizes that her education industry has a huge impact on her children's future.

"In order to convey what we need to communicate as humans, rather than simply teaching the content of a subject according to the manual, do you need to learn first? Therefore, I've been in trouble for a long time. So, I decidedResigned. "This is Aya explaining why she left the education industry in an interview.

After leaving the education industry, Aya enrolled in a graduate student in the American Business School and studied the field of microfinance, but she was not interested in making money itself, "I need it." It is difficult to find a job without going to graduate school for a long time."

It was during this period that Aya entered the crypto industry.

"It was probably at that time that I had the opportunity to talk to Jesse Powell, the founder of the virtual currency exchange Kraken, and felt that blockchain could be with me. The research links financial inclusion to microfinance. The founder asked me if I would help, so I joined Kraken”, Aya recalled in an interview that she was in charge of Kraken’s business in Japan and later became Kraken Japan managing director.

It was 2013, and Vitalik was also a contributor to Bitcoin magazine. When interviewing various people, he would also take the opportunity to talk about his thoughts, such as Where Bitcoin needs improvement, this is the prototype of Ethereum.

"It is said that Kraken's founding members want to support such new technologies and talents and appreciate Vitalik, so when Vitalik was writing the Ethereum white paper, he stayed in Kraken's office. For a while, even the founder of Kraken let Vitalik live in one of his own spare rooms. ”

It was here that Vitalik met someone who worked in Kraken Aya.

Ethereum is first a cultural group

When he recently chatted with a friend, he put forward a point: "All members of the team are actually extensions of the founder's values. , even if the power distribution of web3 is decentralized, this will not change. ”

What he said makes sense. Stokes, who was just appointed as one of the co-heads of the Ethereum Foundation research team, posted a 2022 sentence on his Twitter: "Ethereum is first and foremost a cultural project, we just happen to be able to use software to Use its leverage. ”

Even under the pressure of the community, not only was it not fired by Vitalik, but was awarded a larger Tittle Aya, but also a firm guardian of Ethereum culture, planning for Ethereum's positioning As an "infinite garden", "Ethereum's mission is not to quickly obtain short-term returns, but to promote the popularization and development of decentralization concepts in the long run."

This is all an extension of Vitalik's values.

So when the community verbs at Aya, Vitalik is so breached because he is scolded not only Aya, but also Vitalik himself.

In the earliest Ethereum prequel story, when Vitalik had nothing but an idea, he greeted the top 10 responses. The developers joined and selected five of them as leadership, namely the five founders of Ethereum. After the five founders, three other developers became co-founders in 2014.

At that time, there was no Ethereum Foundation, only eight core leadership, until 2014, the relationship within Ethereum became tense, "After all, I was taking venture capital." The money of funds is to crowdfund funds from all ordinary people; should we take the profit route and become Google in the crypto industry, or a pure non-profit organization? "The future direction of the Ethereum Foundation has become a constantly emerging The topic was debated and factions were derived.

Vitalik recalled this memory and said, "I was once convinced to take Ethereum to a more enterprise-oriented route. But this thing has never been It didn't make me feel more comfortable, and it even made me feel a little dirty. ”

After the final co-founder meeting, Vitalik decided to choose decentralization and non-profit routes. "I tried to shirk the responsibility the whole time because I really didn't want to take responsibility, and eventually I had to clear some people."

End of the time, except for Vitalik , several other Lianchuang left Ethereum, thus deriveing ​​the Ethereum Foundation.

The tragic song of "leftists" on Ethereum

Some people say that all original sins are ultimately ETH'sThe price trend is not ideal.

"But I think the original sin of everything is in the increasingly righted crypto industry, but Ethereum insists on going left." In Lida's view, Ethereum's Since then, the values ​​have not changed. What has changed is this industry. From the political situation in the United States to the entire crypto industry, everyone no longer talks about ideals but stands for PVP casinos. This makes Ethereum very outlier.

From the beginning, the founders and team of Ethereum have adhered to an ideal: decentralization, definitiveization, and the pursuit of the realization of social value. In a bubble and hype market, this ideal seems particularly abrupt.

"Aya's scolding this time is actually a long-term emotional outlet for the community, and to a certain extent, it is a scapegoat. After all, over the past year, Ethereum Fund Will continue to sell coins, which makes the community feel very bad." Lida said.

When the community mood is not good, Vitalik always emphasizes peace and love's "leftist style" that angers the community even more and even causes the ether. Eric's dissatisfaction in the early development of the Fangfang: "It's exhausting to hear someone ignore the community's commands with words like "Don't be too mean". We're here to change the world, not to create a safe space." p>

In Eric's view, the power of ideals is the source of social change, not concessions to The market is changing rapidly. Many times, leaders should start from a long-term perspective and listen to the voices from the community.

"End of all, I lost my enthusiasm for what I used to be so passionate about, because those in charge did not realize the importance of the community and the need for change, but I would rather pay attention to the "good intention" we proposed and whose feelings hurt, rather than understanding a huge community. ”

Early members of Ethereum Values ​​are also constantly colliding and reflecting. All of this seems to be back to the division of the Ethereum community in 2014. Faced with the trend of the industry's continuous right-leaning trend, more and more voices are calling for Ethereum to also take the "capitalization route".

This is also a topic that everyone discussed a lot some time ago. Ethereum's revenue at the protocol level is too low. “If I can take over the Ethereum Foundation, ETH will rise to 10$000, the first thing you do after taking over is to optimize the profits." Sun Yuchen's view has been recognized by most Chinese communities.

Arbitrum charges 10% handling fee for its L3, but as L2, it only gives Ethereum a 2% "tax", which makes many investors I have questioned the ecological developers, and this proportion is really too low.

How much tax is reasonable? In response to this question, BlockBeats asked Sun again what he thought.

"I personally recommend that the annual US dollar tax revenue for Base and Polygon should not be less than US$200 million." In Sun Yuchen's view, although the prosperity of the L2 ecosystem will be direct To increase the value of Ethereum, however, Ethereum is indeed oversubsidized for L2 at present. The 2% tax may be too low, but if it is raised to 8%, it will not only provide more stable revenue for Ethereum, increase revenue by at least $1 billion a year, nor will it suppress Layer 2's development.

"If Layer 2 is in its early stages of development, some subsidies can be made. However, for the already rising large L2, similar to Base, polygon, it is recommended to charge heavy taxes. This is at the level It is also very common that ordinary people are exempt from taxes or 10% tax, but super rich people need to pay a higher level of tax rate of 20-30%," Sun said further.

In addition to increasing efficiency, you also need to reduce costs.

For example, AAVE founder Stani once made his own suggestions on this aspect: "As an organization, the Ethereum Foundation should be a streamlined and efficient organization. . Anyone who has not put in 100% effort should leave the foundation. ”

However, there is a huge gap between the left and right, and changes will not come quickly . Everything takes time, and the rectification of the Ethereum Foundation is also continuing, including some fiscal and administrative reforms, introducing more standardized measures.

"As for the topics that everyone is most concerned about, the changes in the price level must be lagging, just wait." Lida said.