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Traditional blockchain forks are often accompanied by community splits. For example, the fork of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic (ETC) originated from the subjective judgment of "whether to roll back the DAO contract that was hacked."
This fork relies on social consensus - whoever can convince more people, whose chain will "survive".
The definition of Eigenlayer attempts to change this situation. Through the two keywords "pre-defined" and "self-verification", it changes the triggering conditions of the fork from vague moral or economic debates to clear technical rules.
——Pre-defined: This means that the conditions for the fork are not the result of a post-argument, but are written into the agreement in advance, as clear as legal terms. This reduces the uncertainty caused by temporary decisions.
——Self-verification: It emphasizes that the verifiability of events must be decentralized. Any node (even light nodes) can independently determine whether the fork conditions have been met, avoiding reliance on centralized "authoritative" interpretations.
1) The potential and shortcomings of Ethereum’s existing rules🔻
Ethereum already has some "predefined events" that can serve as the basis for forks, such as invalid blocks being rejected, reorganizations that have exceeded the time limit being rejected, etc.
These rules do have a certain degree of "self-validation" properties, especially the first three points (invalid block rejection, timeout reorganization rejection, unavailable block rejection), because they can be independently completed through local inspection of nodes. However, validator censorship and client bugs have exposed the limitations of the current rules.
1. Verification challenges for validator review:
As you said, validator review can only rely on "indirect evidence" at present, such as complaints on social media. This method is obviously not "self-verified" enough, because it is easy to manipulate (such as someone maliciously spreading rumors) and cannot be algorithmized. If review is to be used as a basis for forking, technical indicators must be designed, such as an observable standard of "X consecutive blocks do not contain a certain type of transaction". This will allow nodes to make independent judgments instead of relying on external information.
2. Complexity of client bugs:
Although client bugs can be verified through pseudo-code specifications, in actual operation, the technical capabilities of node operators vary. If most nodes cannot identify bugs in time and reach consensus, the execution phase of the fork may fall into chaos. This is why client diversity is important - a single client dominance can easily lead to a "bug is fate" situation, while diversity disperses risks.
2) Forks do not include 🔻
1. Situations where the fork proposer conducts censorship, such as the block proposer censoring certain content.
2. Fork because Lido, Coinbase or someone else has 33% stake
3. Forking due to application or user-level errors.
Forks should focus on core issues at the protocol level, rather than external factors or secondary errors. This is actually to define the boundaries of forks and prevent them from being abused as political tools. For example:
——If there is a fork because Lido or Coinbase holds 33% of the shares, this is essentially targeting economic power rather than technical failure, which obviously deviates from the principle of "self-verification".
——Application layer errors (such as a DApp crashing) should not trigger forks, as this is beyond the scope of responsibility of the underlying blockchain.
This boundary setting is critical. It prevents the fork from becoming a game of "whoever has the loudest voice is right", while also protecting Ethereum's decentralized spirit.
3) From preparation to execution: the ideal process for forking 🔻
There are two stages mentioned in the white paper:
——Preparation stage: The Ethereum community needs to reach a consensus, write the fork conditions into the protocol code, and make it public and transparent on the chain. This is not only a technical task, but also a governance task that requires balancing the interests of all parties.
——Execution phase: Once the conditions are triggered, the node automatically executes the fork based on local verification without human intervention. This requires the conditions to be designed precisely enough to avoid ambiguity.
But in reality, reaching consensus in the preparation stage may be the biggest difficulty. Ethereum upgrades (such as PoS transformation) have shown that even technical improvements can be delayed for years due to divergent interests. The formulation of fork conditions may face greater controversy.
📍Conclusion:
The essence of Ethereum forks is to maintain the security, credibility, and decentralization of the network, and the “predefined and self-verified” framework attempts to make this process more objective and automated.
The existing rules are a good starting point, but to truly realize this vision, more efforts need to be made in technical design (especially censorship detection) and community governance. In the future, forks may no longer be a "civil war" that tears the community apart, but a "scalpel" for the protocol to repair itself - provided that we can set the rules well enough.
🔹Original compilation link: https://x.com/sreeramkannan/status/1893361540759433558?t=nQp5B8x78sBq6Wp9GAewEA&s=19
