The Universal Protocol Is Already Here

Now 10 years old, Ethereum is entering its "civilization infra phase."

The network has become a digital public works project. Like how power grid modernization revolutionized 20th-century life, Ethereum will optimize 21st-century society.

But Ethereum isn't backed by a government, and it's not just for the people of one nation. It's for the world, built by people from around the world. And it's actualizing as The Universal Protocol so that anyone, anywhere, can increasingly do anything on their own terms.

Put metaphorically, Ethereum can be the fortress and the cathedral. Ethereum can get to a point where it's indefinitely impervious to nation-state attacks and beyond, and it can do this hardening while scaling to the point that it can trustlessly facilitate all the world's commerce and culture.

That's the future. And it's not a mystery how to complete this becoming. It'll take making good on visions like Lean Ethereum and lowercase snarks, while living up to the tenets of The Trustless Manifesto.

We'll evolve through lean consensus, and lean data, and lean execution. And this streamlining will come via programmable cryptography, i.e. next-gen cryptographic primitives like zkSNARKs, which allow for provably correct and private computation and point the way to Ethereum's zkVM future.

The potential here cannot be overstated. This power is why Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has said Ethereum's SNARKs embrace is "a cryptographic Manhattan Project, one the [Ethereum Foundation] is investing tens of millions into" as it evolves "into a snark-first org."

Ethereum Beast Mode - Scaling L1 to 10k and Beyond | Justin Drake on Bankless

Justin Drake unveils “Lean Ethereum,” a bold blueprint to make the base layer dramatically faster and cheaper, without turning it into a datacenter chain.

Bankless

Better yet, this zk vision won't just make Ethereum cheaper and faster, as it'll also help the L1 offer better privacy through things like private account abstraction, private RPC queries, and proof aggregation protocols for more affordable private transactions.

Plus, the underlying cryptographic primitives here are mathematical extensions of the philosophical values written into The Trustless Manifesto (which you, too, can sign). No unverifiable outcomes. No indispensable gatekeepers. Autonomy, security, and verifiability for all.

My read, then? Lo the ascent of the World Computer! The unlimited public good, the universal machine, lean, snarky, trustless, and always on. This dream is a dream worth fighting for, and one upon which an open civilization can stand and thrive. Bully for us, and now let's finish the job.