Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum underestimates the importance of the community, we are not doing enough in communication

According to a report by Trustnodes on October 15, Etafang's co-founder Vitalik Buterin said at a recent meeting that he thought that as long as the technology is done, the community will naturally be built, but he now believes that if the community is not invested, the community Can't build it. He said this:

“We underestimated the importance of the community. Two years ago, I believed that if the technology was done well, the community would naturally be better. And now I feel that if I don’t invest in the community, then good technology will not come, or will not do it. so good."

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What he said about the investment community is unclear, but the Ethereum Foundation once had a pretty good marketing team that was disbanded a few years ago under the criticism of the bitcoin maximalist. It is.

This leads to a lack of communication problems, and in some cases, expectations management is also bad. As the 2018 project progresses, the need to address this issue becomes clearer.

Earlier this year, when an Ethereum developer named Lane Rettig tried to simplify project management and thunder, the demand peaked.

Some structural changes were subsequently implemented, but the logistics of the Fifth Developer Conference (Devcon V) was criticized for not having wi-fi installed because some of the conversations could not be broadcast live.

The meeting agenda was released the week before the Devcon meeting, so there was no opportunity for the community to get involved, but in general the participants seemed to be impressed with the content of the meeting itself, and the criticism seemed to be only for logistical aspects.

The redesigned Ethereum website also shows that it doesn't care about the community, and its pages look just as boring as a university professor's course.

There is at least some content on the Ethereum website. There is even a yellow bird on the Ethereum Foundation's website.

Ethereum Foundation official website screenshot | Source: Ethereum Foundation

What does the Ethereum Foundation do above, where is its headquarters, how it is going, how to apply for grants, where it spends money, and so on, without any introduction.

Therefore, the public mainly obtains the latest information through speeches at conferences, words on Twitter, or interviews with reporters sometimes, so it is not easy to keep up with this information.

But some of its practices may be desirable. For example, Buterin uses a multi-client approach to efficiently assign "power." On the other hand, the lack of communication will cause the Ethereum community to be ignorant of what is happening.

The latest example is the development of a deposit contract, which was originally expected to be launched at the Devcon meeting. Ethereum 2.0 coordinator Danny Ryan gave the latest update, saying "When BLS standardization is complete, Released. Obviously, five blockchain projects sent a strong signal last week, reaching a consensus on the current draft standard."

It doesn't matter if there is a small delay, but if Ryan is updating the progress in Reddit's comments, who knows? Is it true that journalists should follow the developers behind to get the basic information about the opening? This should not be the work of a liberal arts graduate like Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of the Ethereum Foundation.

Buterin also said:

"The development of technology is slower than I expected. Five years ago I thought we were able to run PoS and shards for a while now. For Ethereum, the same is true for other projects."

Fragmentation technology is indeed very difficult. As far as we know, Ethereum developers were not really committed to the development of fragmentation until mid-2018.

This may be because developers are a bit lax about coding during the bull market, but they are working hard with multiple teams, and these are difficult things, so usually they have considerable room for manoeuvre.

What is even more worrying is that the trend of this non-regular update development process / or the way they communicate with the public will make it impossible for everyone to get information in a timely manner.

For example, the Ethereum Foundation's “official” communication approach has little to nothing, just an interoperability review last month and a Geth half-year update in July.

They don't have any plans to start a deposit contract, and they don't explain what it is, or what Ethereum 2.0 is, or anything about regular development funding and vulnerability rewards.

However, if they eventually develop, the community is likely to follow, but during this period, lack of communication with the public may unnecessarily create uncertainty, although they have made a lot of progress in development and are I have done a lot of work, but there are very few reports about these jobs.

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