Author: Jason Chaskin Source: paragraph Translation: Shan Oppa, Golden Finance

Ethereum is in a A key turning point. The scale is expanding and we face challenges that really need to be solved. However, our largest communication platform is dragging down our progress. We are designing the mechanisms of Ethereum from first principles, but why do we still rely on a social media model that focuses on amplifying anger? Algorithms do not show the real world, they create conflicts, intensify oppositions, and make us waste our energy on unnecessary interference. But this is not necessarily the case. We know how to build a better system, and now is the time to act.

Before discussing how to build a better social network, we need to review the current problem first. The goal of social media platforms is to maximize user engagement, but an unfortunate feature of human nature is that anger can greatly drive interaction. I voted with my friends in a group chat, and all 17 people agreed that social media is harmful to mental health – no controversy, it is “common sense.”

This It's not a coincidence that the platform was designed like this. Social media companies don’t care about your happiness, they only care about interactive data, because interaction can bring profits. Even those who created these platforms are well aware of their dangers. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel limit screen time for their children because they are fully aware of the addictive nature of these systems.

Social media was not like this at first. Early social platforms were very simple. If you follow someone, you can see their posts in chronological order. There is no presentational post or recommendation algorithm. But when these platforms expand and require business models, everything changes. The longer the user stays on the platform, the more money the platform makes, so immersing users is not only a function, but the core of the entire product. This is why algorithm recommendations appear.

When Elon Musk opens the Twitter algorithm, it confirms many people's long-standing guesses that the only goal of the algorithm is to allow users to spend as long as possible Stay on the platform. And what attracts the most attention is anger. Once you understand this logic, everything makes sense: anger drives interaction, interaction brings communication, and communication expands influence. increaseThe fastest way for fans is to create conflicts. The more extreme the remarks are, the more attention they can gain.

In crypto communities, the loudest voices always dominate, not because their views are the most valuable, but because anger brings more interaction. The easiest way to be heard is not to provide meaningful ideas, but to attack others. Rather than focusing on real issues, conversations on social media are often dominated by the most controversial topics.

This situation is actually hurting Ethereum. The time and energy that should have been used to solve core problems is wasted in meaningless debates and disputes fighting for traffic. What should have been constructive discussions have become confrontation and separation.

Look at the issues that almost everyone in the Ethereum community reached a consensus:

• L2 interoperability needs improvement.

•Extending data availability (blobs) of L2 is an urgent task.

None of these are controversial topics. From application developers to Rollup teams, core developers, and then to users, everyone's goals are the same. However, social media algorithms shift our attention to the latest "hot-spot controversy" every day, rather than how to actually solve the problem.

I launched a vote on Farcaster asking people if they think the Ethereum community is divided, and 60% of them think it is. This number is no longer low, but if I voted the same on Twitter, I'm sure it would be worse. However, if we put aside the false debates created by these algorithms and return to reality, we will find that most people actually agree on the core issues. Those seemingly intense quarrels on Twitter do not represent reality, they are just what the algorithm chooses to let us see.

It is not just a social status, using anger to obtain traffic can also bring economic returns . The easiest way to quickly increase popularity is to be a jerk on Twitter. This not only increases the number of fans, but also brings podcast interview opportunities, better investment channels, and even finds a high-paying new job. Kaito has pushed this step to the extreme, directly using "yaps” rewards interactive behavior, which is almost certainly tokenized. The entire social system has evolved into a pattern that rewards the worst behaviors, and this impact is everywhere.

This is not just a problem with Ethereum, it exists in all major online communities. When a network develops to a certain scale and different opinions begin to collide, the algorithm is no longer just showing the facts, but Amplify opposition and conflict.

But what if we don't have to? What if the platform we build does not prioritize creating conflicts, but promotes consensus?

This is not an assumption. At the Devcon Conference, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang gave a keynote speech, and she talked about Polis - an open source platform that Taiwan has succeeded Use it to drive constructive public discussion. Unlike traditional social media, Polis does not have a “reply” button. Instead of competing with each other to create the most communicative attacking rhetoric, users can vote on their opinions (Agree/ Oppose/Skip). There is no motive for quarrels because there is no mechanism to encourage quarrels. Traditional social platforms create a "tug-of-war" through endless replies, which Polis avoids. < /p>

A real case occurred in a JavaScript conference in Taiwan. Whether the organizers of the conference should invite speakers from a company has become a controversial topic. The discussion quickly escalated into a fierce verbal battle of more than 200 comments, and the two factions clearly divided. One side believed that inviting speakers did not mean that they agreed with the company's position, while the other side believed that this was invisibly acknowledging the company and Its background.

To avoid the endless confrontation of this debate, someone introduced Polis. Unlike traditional social media, on Polis, participants cannot Reply, you can only choose "Agree/Op/Skip" for different views.

The results are quickly revealed:

•Polis shows two clear camps.

•The group on the left supports inviting corporate speakers, believing that technical communication is not Equivalent to the recognition of the position.

•The group on the rightOppose the invitation, believing that this may provide legitimacy to the business and its background.

However , Amid the differences, one view has received widespread support from both sides:

"JSDC (Conference) organizers should have the freedom to decide on agenda."

This does not eliminate the differences, but it creates a common basis for the discussion to be more compatible Constructive. Rather than keep burning the conflict, Polis lets participants find key points that can reach consensus. For those interested in how Taiwan uses Polis to conduct public decision-making discussions, Colin Megill has published a detailed blog post.

You may have seen mechanisms similar to Polis on some platforms. For example, Twitter’s Community Notes is a system inspired by Polis. Instead of relying on simple likes or majority decisions, it uses machine learning to analyze voting patterns and highlights views that can be shared by opposing groups. This ensures that community annotations are not just popular content, but content that can truly transcend differences and build consensus. Vitalik has a deep look at the mathematical principles of this system in his blog post, My Thoughts on Community Notes.

We have seen how different incentives affect conversations on social platforms. For example, "ETH Holders" is a Twitter account, and anyone with at least 2 ETHs can post anonymously using ZK Proofs. It is worth mentioning that this is an extremely cool application case of ZK technology in the real world. What is most surprising is that most of the remarks on this account are positive comments on Ethereum.

In a world where Twitter algorithms reward only negative content, people need to be anonymous to express a positive attitude towards Ethereum. This is the reality that social media distorts at present.

The question is not whether there is a better social model, because a better model already exists. Polis is open source, has been successfully applied in the real world, and it proves that social media does not have to rely on conflict to operate.

We know the problem and the solution. The only thing left is to build it.

Ideally, we can build a better Twitter client directly so that we can preserve Twitter's network effects without being manipulated by its algorithm. However, Elon Musk blocked Twitter's API, making this One solution has become impossible. So, which platform should we build it on?

In fact, there is already a protocol with open APIs and native Ethereum users , and allow us to experiment freely. The name of this protocol starts with F... Yes, you guessed it right, friend.tech.

But the solution is not Just simply using Farcaster. Warpcast doesn't solve the problem of algorithms, its ranking system is closed source and may not do better than Twitter in sifting valuable discussions. However, the beauty of decentralized social media In fact, we are not limited to a specific client, we can build one ourselves.

How to build a better Ethereum social platform?

We can build a Farcaster client focused on Ethereum, which is able to aggregate posts from all clients (including Warpcast) from the Ethereum channel. However, this platform does not The traditional information flow model will be adopted, but each discussion will be broken down into a voting point of view.

In this client, the user can directly go to Ethereum Channels publish opinions, but unlike traditional social platforms, users cannot engage in "tug-of-war debates", they can only choose to "Agree/Oppose/Skip". Polis will analyze the voting model, filter out the real consensus, and eliminate it Noise and clearly show the points of identity and differences between different groups.

To ensure the quality of the discussion, the client will automatically crawl Ethereum MagiciKey technical discussions on ans and ETH Research, translate lengthy technical posts into clear, structured perspectives that allow the entire community to vote on. Governance Proposals, Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and protocol updates will also be included, allowing the broader Ethereum ecosystem to express its views without being overwhelmed by social media noise.

Twitter may not disappear, but it should not dominate the discussion on Ethereum

I It is not thought that Crypto Twitter will disappear anytime soon, but a Polis-like social platform can be the necessary balance force. Currently, when the discussion on Twitter explodes, it’s hard to tell whether a topic is a real question or just another cycle of anger created by algorithms.

Imagine that you can open another platform and immediately see the entire Ethereum ecosystem (application developers, ETH holders, core developers, investors (those who are really consider important) issues. This will provide a real industry thermometer, rather than letting Twitter influence public opinion orientation.

Many people criticize Farcaster as: it is not conducive to the Ethereum ecosystem. Some people think it is the "echo room" of a niche community, while others worry that it will split the Ethereum community. But the real problem is not Farcaster, but Twitter itself.

As I analyzed in this article, Twitter's algorithm is to create opposition, encourage performative interactions, and slow down Ethereum's progress. Leaving Twitter is not about entering the echo chamber, but about getting rid of a system that amplifies conflicts and misleads priorities.

Polis will clearly show this if there is a widespread and strong disagreement on a topic. If users from different backgrounds unanimously oppose a certain idea, then this point can be clearly presented without being overshadowed by meaningless traffic hype.

This is a better way to measure the true opinions of the Ethereum community. It won’t eliminate criticism, but it can make criticism measurable and more constructive.

Example: How to measure the community's Gas Limit'sOpinion?

To show how Polis makes community opinions measurable, we can take the debate on the improvement of Ethereum Gas Limit as an example. Key stances can be distilled into the following voting views:

•Ethereum should gradually increase Gas restrictions as hardware upgrades.

•Prematurely elevating Gas restrictions can hurt decentralization, making running full nodes more difficult.

•Elevated Gas limits should be considered only after adequate benchmarking of network health and validator costs.

Rather than endlessly arguing on Twitter, the Ethereum community should have a clear, structured way to express its views. If 80% of validators, 65% of researchers and 75% of ETH holders agree on a point of view, it will become a measurable consensus signal. On the contrary, if a view is overwhelmingly rejected among all groups, it can indicate that it lacks widespread support without people flipping through hostile arguments and emotional tweets.

Encrypt One of the biggest cognitive biases on Twitter is that the noiseiest sounds seem to represent the views of most people. But the truth is, these people are just the ones who are most motivated to participate in the interaction. The few who rely on hype anger and creating conflict to make profits dominate the discussion, while the real silence majority—those who are more rational, more pragmatic, or just not interested in the “traffic war”—often choose silence. This creates a feedback loop that makes the most radical and extreme voices seem to be speaking out for the entire community, even if it is not.

Similar situations have also occurred in many online discussions. Take a Polis discussion experiment on online alcohol sales in Taiwan as an example. A total of 447 people participated in the vote, but only 32 people actually commented. That is, the percentage of speakers is less than 10%, and if we only look at who is speaking, we will come to a completely distorted conclusion, mistakenly thinking that these 32 people represent what most people think. Instead, because Polis allowed the silent majority to vote directly, it was eventually able to obtain a more authentic and comprehensive portrait of public opinion.

This is exactly what Ethereum needs to establish different discussionsThe reason for the pattern.

A system that does not allow social media algorithms to determine the right to speak, but allows views that truly resonate with the community to gain attention. A platform that rewards clear, rational discussion rather than fosters conflict and incitement speech. A place where people who don’t want to waste time quarrel but still want to have an impact on the future of the community can vote for the discussion.

To further improve transparency, we can even create a public dashboard that displays the participation ratio of votes and comments in real time. This will allow anyone to see how many people are expressing their opinions and how many are simply voting for or against, thus helping us filter out the noise of social media and ensuring that the true view of the community is presented.

Ethereum has always been the place to make ideas a reality.

We have witnessed its breakthroughs in the fields of forecasting markets, quadratic financing, decentralized social media, etc. Now we have the opportunity to build something greater—a platform that will really make Ethereum builders, researchers and users really reach a consensus. A system that can accelerate ecological development rather than create division.

This is not a theoretical imagination, but a reality that we can build now.

If we do it right, Ethereum will not only become the most decentralized and secure blockchain network, but also the most powerful in the entire crypto industry. Ecosystem of productivity.