Will Curve’s “decentralization” be better? (Part 2)

Source: Daoshuo Blockchain

Today I would like to discuss the second question with you:

If a project develops according to the public's understanding of "decentralization", will it be better?

Before that, I would like to repeat yesterday's point of view:

My understanding of "decentralization" is relatively narrow, limited to the technical aspect, that is, the technical operation of the project will not stop due to external interference and obstruction, and the project can still operate normally even if there is external control and interference.

The meaning of "decentralization" understood by the public is broader, and it also includes social relationship elements such as "no core leadership", "no core organization", and "no core team" to a certain extent.

If Curve is measured according to my understanding of "decentralization", it has actually achieved "decentralization". Because since its smart contract is deployed on Ethereum, as long as Ethereum can still operate normally, its operation can basically be normal and will not be too affected by external forces.

In fact, according to this "decentralization" standard, not only Curve, but most of the DeFi projects deployed on Ethereum have basically achieved "decentralization".

But what about "decentralization" as understood by the public? Can such "decentralization" make the project develop better?

"One can polish jade with the stones of other mountains". For this, we can refer to the two most typical cases: Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Let's look at Ethereum first.

At the beginning of Ethereum, many people only regarded Ethereum as "Bitcoin that can run virtual machines". But now there are very few people who hold such a view.

Ethereum is not only increasingly different from Bitcoin in terms of technical structure, but also increasingly different from Bitcoin in terms of ecology.

How did all this happen?

There is no doubt that it was led step by step by the core developers of Ethereum headed by Vitalik.

In the past few years of development, we can count on our fingers a lot of milestone events in the history of Ethereum development: changes in the economic model, POW to POS, account abstraction, the development of second-layer expansion, changes in the direction of Ethereum 2.0...

All these changes are modifications to the Ethereum consensus layer or core code. Can such system modifications and changes happen without a highly cohesive team and a spiritual leader?

Can we imagine that a loose, purely community-operated project can lead a series of such changes to a behemoth?

Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and user needs are emerging in an endless stream. As a bottom-level blockchain that supports the entire crypto ecosystem, it must keep pace with the times, absorb the most advanced technology, and maintain the most cutting-edge development.

We can understand this by reading Vitalik's frequently published articles and frequently leading the EIP standards. He has been working hard to make Ethereum constantly adapt to new environments, new users, and new scenarios.

If there is no such person and team to lead Ethereum forward, Ethereum will not only fail to maintain its current position, but will even be overtaken in the near future.

Every time I mention the threshold of Ethereum relative to other blockchains, I will definitely mention the Ethereum core team. They bring endless vitality to Ethereum, and this vitality spreads to the entire community, covering academic, cultural, atmosphere and other aspects.

This is by no means something that a loose community without core leadership can do.

Compared to Ethereum, the (large) changes in the Bitcoin mainnet are few and far between. However, this does not have much impact on Bitcoin, because Bitcoin has been positioned as "digital gold" in the entire crypto ecosystem.

This means that the Bitcoin mainnet does not need major technical changes, and can always stand in the entire ecosystem based on consensus alone.

For such a blockchain, it does not need core leadership, and can be completely "decentralized" in management, organization and team.

Although Bitcoin also has core developers, their task is no longer to lead Bitcoin to large-scale technical updates, but to try to maintain the basic architecture of Bitcoin, and only make some necessary small changes to Bitcoin.

In this wave of Bitcoin inscription technology development, all major innovations are based on Bitcoin's existing architecture, and almost none of them are achieved by major changes to the main network's technical architecture.

However, how many cases like Bitcoin can there be in the crypto ecosystem?

I think there are only a handful of them.

The vast majority of projects require strong core leaders and teams. Under their leadership, the projects continue to make progress, keep updating, and move forward courageously.

If these projects are handed over to the community and become a "decentralized" project in management, they will most likely stop moving forward, stay where they are, or at most make some minor changes.

Back to the Curve project.

Not to mention the distant past, I think one of its most important innovations in recent years is the launch of its own stablecoin crvUSD. This move seems ordinary, but I think it is difficult to come up with such an idea without a deep understanding of the project and sensitivity to the entire DeFi ecosystem.

And to do this, I find it hard to imagine anyone other than the project's founding team (such as loose community members) can do it.

So I am very cautious about the consequences of taking a DeFi project away from the founding team and handing it over to the community.

This is why I pay close attention to the fundamental reason of the project team when looking at the long-term development of the project (including MEME coin).