Author: Chen Jian Source: X, @jason_chen998
Vitalik, the first general secretary of Ethereum, has pointed out the direction for the future development of the market. In fact, this tweet is still very interesting. It contains a lot of information that can be discussed, including the discussion of Ethereum L1 and L2 economic models and asset pricing models.
The first reason is that @loi_luu raised a question that everyone criticized Ethereum for: "L2 took away Ethereum's transaction volume, but did not pay Ethereum enough fees." After the 4844 upgrade, L2 paid Ethereum the DA fee in the Blob. Although L2 is cheaper, Ethereum's income has dropped sharply compared to before. Loi and I are wondering whether we can pay a fixed proportion of Gas fees as a tax like L3 does to L2. For example, if you want to send a Layer3 on Arbtrium, 10% of each transaction income must be fixed to Arbtrium.
Vitalik’s reply is that currently L1 cannot accurately measure the actual fees executed on L2 at the protocol level. Similarly, L2 such as Arbtrium cannot accurately measure the fees of its L3. @stonecoldpat0 from Arbtrium also replied that this is indeed the case. The smart contracts of some protocols can realize automatic charging, but it is impossible to do so in all cases. Therefore, the so-called 10% tax is just a gentleman’s agreement, and L3 still has to keep its promise.
So Vitalik thinks that it is too difficult for Ethereum to make changes at the protocol level to force L2 to pay taxes for every fee. He thinks that a neutral proof aggregation layer across all Layer2s can be made, and this layer is responsible for all L2 remittances to L1.
If Vitalik's proposal is established, Ethereum will charge L2s a considerable transaction tax in addition to the original DA security fee. Regardless of whether L2s agree or not, at least this is another strong boost to Ethereum's economic model. It is strongly recommended that General Secretary Vitalik personally direct and deploy it and implement it as soon as possible!
In addition, from this perspective, perhaps Eigenlayer or Based Rollup represented by @puffer_finance is more suitable to do the work of connecting the L1 and Layer2 tax middle layers?
In addition, Vitalik mentioned an interesting asset price game model, the Harberger tax. The reason for this is that if we try to impose taxes by force, people will have many ways to evade taxes, such as lowering asset prices. So Vitalik mentioned a theoretical model he thinks is very valuable, the Harberger tax. However, this is still not applicable to the L2 and L1 tax issues discussed above. Vitalik just mentioned it in order to promote his son ENS. He said that he has repeatedly suggested that ENS adopt the Harberger tax model.
The Harberger tax is very interesting. It is a free market game model proposed by Arnold Harberger, an economist in the last century. It hopes to maximize tax revenue while improving asset liquidity by levying taxes based on the autonomous quotations of asset owners. What does it mean? Give an example.
For example, if you have a house with a fair market value of 100 million yuan, the government can collect 2 million yuan from you according to a 2% tax. If you think the tax is too much, you can lower the price of the house in various ways and never sell it, so as to pay less tax, thus forming an asset monopoly, reducing market liquidity while not paying enough tax. Harberger believes that it is reasonable for everyone to have the right to price their own assets, but since you have made an offer, you must accept the purchase of others. The core concept of Harberger tax is that everyone must quote the assets they hold and pay taxes according to your offer. If others accept your offer, you must sell it to him.
In the Harberger tax model, a game model of asset holders, buyers, bids, and taxes will be formed. For example, if you have a house and you think it is worth 100 million, then you report it according to this price and pay taxes. If you quote 10 million to pay less tax, then when someone offers 10 million to buy your house, you must accept the forced sale. It seems that you have paid less tax, but you have borne the loss of selling the asset at a low price. If you think that although the market price of this house is 100 million, but your ancestors have lived here for generations and are unwilling to move, you can report 1 billion to avoid being sold, but you need to pay taxes at 1 billion. If you think the extra tax is worth the extreme price to avoid being bought by others, it is also OK.
In short, as an asset holder, you will carefully consider your own situation to price the asset, and refine the granularity of the entire social and economic game to specific people, so as to ensure that the price of each asset is critical to the most effective circulation range, and the tax can also be reasonably maximized.
Harberger tax is bound to be unworkable in the real world, but there will be no problem in the blockchain. This is just a job that is automatically executed by a smart contract. For example, @orb_land is a typical case, which has also been liked by Vitalik. You can buy the expert's time on it. Each time is an NFT, but you must set a selling price when buying, otherwise the purchase cannot be completed. Then the system will collect taxes according to the price you set. For example, if you buy a time of Musk, you must set a premium that you can bear to accept the tax but not make less money. Therefore, Vitalik has been urging ENS to upgrade to Harberger tax. If the ultimate beautiful vision of RWA such as real estate on the chain is realized in the future, Harberger tax is still expected to be fully implemented.
JinseFinance
Weiliang