Why Two Ethereum Funding Proposals Failed: Lessons on Credible Neutrality and Public Goods

Summary

This article examines two Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP 1890 and EIP 6969) that attempted to embed public goods funding directly into Ethereum's protocol layer. Both proposals failed, illustrating the tension between funding public goods and maintaining credible neutrality in a base-layer protocol. EIP 1890 proposed a mandatory gas surcharge for protocol development, while EIP 6969 introduced a more sophisticated mechanism involving block-space fees. The article argues that hardcoding allocation logic into a credibly neutral base layer is fundamentally flawed, and that public goods funding requires new architectural approaches rather than protocol amendments.

Source

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