Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once elaborated on this thinking in the blog article Making Ethereum alignment legible Recommendation: Regarding issues of decentralization and security, ensure that reliance on centralized infrastructure is minimized and censorship vulnerabilities are minimized. To this end, the methods we can test and evaluate include: "Walk Away Test" and "Internal Attack Test".

Among them, "internal attack testing" refers to launching an independent attack on the system to observe how much harm will be caused, so as to discover vulnerabilities; and "leave testing" It is a newer thinking tool used to check the degree of dependence of projects and network centralization. It can become a key test for evaluating decentralized projects, and can also be improved and upgraded into a risk rating tool.

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Making Ethereum alignment legible, original text Please check:

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What is "leave testing"?

If your team and servers disappeared tomorrow, would your application still work?

This is the core testing idea of ​​"leave testing" - this is a test that can be used to evaluate whether a Web3 project, platform or protocol has the ability to truly operate independently and Tools for thinking about the value of sustainability.

"Leaving Test" is closely related to the technical philosophy of decentralization and autonomy of the blockchain. The thinking directions that can be derived from this test include:

Project development:

If the development team is disbanded, can the project still operate independently?

Is there an active community that can take over the project after the team leaves?

Is the project's code open source and able to attract developers to continue improving it?

Is there a decentralized validator node protecting the network, or sufficient community support to maintain development?

Economic model:

Is the project sustainable? Operating economic model?

Does the project have sustainable application scenarios?

Does the appreciation of assets on the project essentially rely on speculative manipulation or centralized control?

Community governance:

Project participants Are there ways to participate fairly in decision-making?

Can the project initiate decision-making mechanisms and solve problems without identifying core managers?

Does the project have to rely on a few core members to manage it, or does it have a broader basis for collective wisdom and collective governance?

Why is "leaving the test" important?

If a project relies too much on the founding team or certain key personnel to operate; if a network must rely on a fixed server to process data, then it is essentially Still centralized, the long-term viability, value, and even censorship and risk resistance of the project or network may be called into question.

The importance of "leaving testing" is that through this thinking tool, we can dig out the actual situation of the project or network's dependence on centralized infrastructure, so that the project or network can It can effectively make improvements, and the technical philosophy it relies on is firm "decentralization."

In 2017, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin wrote this in an early blog post discussing the concept of decentralization:

"Decentralization" is one of the most common words in the field of cryptoeconomics, and is often used as a direct basis to measure whether a network is a blockchain network. However, there is often a lot of confusion and confusion surrounding what the word actually means.

Vitalik Buterin pointed out: When people discuss a certain decentralization issue, they are actually discussing three independent aspects:

Is the architecture centralized or decentralized?

For example, how many computers does this system consist of? How many computers can this system tolerate crashing at any one time and still running?

Is it centralized or decentralized?

For example, how many individuals and organizations can ultimately control the computers that make up this system?

Is it logically centralized or decentralized?

For example, what if the system interface and database structure are a single whole? Or an unstructured group? If the users and providers of the system are split into two, can they still operate as completely independent units?

As for emphasizing the role and meaning of "decentralization", Vitalik Buterin also gave a clear explanation for this in his 2018 blog post:

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Fault-tolerant: A decentralized system has a lower probability of unexpected failure because a decentralized system relies on many independent components. In theory, independent components can The probability of aging is relatively low.

Ability to resist attacks: Decentralized systems make it more costly to be destroyed and manipulated by attacks because decentralized systems lack Sensitive center point. The cost and difficulty of launching an attack on a system with a clear central point is significantly lower than that of a decentralized system.

Prevent collusion: if participants in a decentralized system conspire to benefit themselves at the expense of other participants , they pay a higher price than participants in a centralized system.

Core value: key test for evaluating decentralized projects

If you look at the logic of "leaving the test", Bitcoin can be It is considered that this test has been passed: the public does not know where Satoshi Nakamoto is, but Bitcoin can continue to develop relying on the decentralized network and global developers.

In Ethereum, founder Vitalik Buterin once mentioned on the forum in 2022: Almost all Rollups currently are not mature, and most of them adopt the so-called It is an auxiliary means for Training Wheels to ensure operation. However, the auxiliary means of Training Wheels reflect the Rollup project's reliance on "manual intervention" on the other hand. The lower the risk of Layer 2 network that does not rely on Training Wheels; the more it relies on Training Wheels, the higher the risk of Layer 2 network.

To this end, Vitalik Buterin and others graded the Rollup project's dependence on Training Wheels: Stage 0 (complete dependence), Stage 1 (partial dependence) , Stage 2 (completely abandoned). Subsequently, the L2beat website revised the classification scheme through soliciting opinions from the community, and upgraded it to "Layer2 Risk Rating Indicators" in June 2024 to conduct risk ratings for different Layer2 projects.

What are Training Wheels?

Training Wheels (common translation: auxiliary wheels) are certain restrictive mechanisms or measures added to ensure safety and stability in the early implementation of Rollup technology. .

It is necessary to implement the Rollup protocol of Training Wheels, which usually cannot be trusted or minimized. The main reasons may include that the code is too complex or security audit has not been carried out. The potential attack surface of the contract is large; the protocol has just been launched, user trust has not yet been established, etc.

In this regard, Vitalik Buterin pointed out: His ideal goal is to see more people like L2beat Such an entity emerges to be able to track the reality of individual projects in terms of meeting established criteria, or meeting other criteria proposed by the community. The competition between projects will no longer be about having the right friends, but about being as consistent as possible based on clear and understandable criteria.

From a larger perspective, "Leave Test" can actually be improved and upgraded into a risk rating tool to measure Web3 wallets, or games, and DeFi The essence of decentralization and the actual situation of development sustainability of various decentralized use cases.

As a common philosophical theory: to solve the problem of "who supervises whom", the best way is to separate powers rather than centralize power. Project "alignment" is oriented towards the concentration of power, while the separation of powers depends on system and culture - in the blockchain world, this system and culture represent "consensus standards".