Who Defines Ethereum? Cultural Convergence and the Truth of Cryptocurrency

A philosophical reflection on the consensus of code and shared computational reality.

Written by: Conall O'Reilly

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Ethereum is a philosophical revolution and a cultural consensus built on universal, shared, and neutral infrastructure. However, at the practical level, it is a set of software tools and an ongoing research project that provides us with the technical mechanisms to realize this vision. Various software specifications, engineering implementations, and continuous research work together to form what we recognize as the Ethereum Protocol.

Philosophy Condensed into Code

Language carries human reason, philosophy, and thought. However, any expression used to elucidate an idea will inherently simplify the idea itself; the expressive capacity of descriptive tools ultimately has limitations. The core ideas of Ethereum can be concretely expressed through formal languages: mathematical symbols, logical computational architectures, and program code. The Ethereum Protocol is the product of humanity's exploration of how the ideas of Ethereum can be realized in the real world. If we view the Ethereum Protocol as a shared computational reality, its establishment relies on three major ontological pillars:

• Cultural Convergence: Achieving consensus on the general definition of the Ethereum Protocol through multi-party collaboration at cultural and social levels.
• Cryptographic Truth: Defining what constitutes

Turing completeness means that there is no upper limit to the set of executable operations. Hardcoding in the architecture or embedding precompiled functions within the EVM would unnecessarily restrict the collaborative behaviors that can be conducted on Ethereum. The ultimate goal of EVM design is extreme generalization and abstraction, where any achievable function can be accomplished through code. Even cryptographic identities can be abstracted: EVM code with addresses can call any custom validation function, rather than being limited to hardcoded public key systems. Not only computational behaviors need abstraction, but the forms of execution and storage on Ethereum also need generalization, thus forming a complete spectrum of "existence" possibilities within the Ethereum context. The physical universe does not have the closed boundaries of existence wrapped in consensus like Ethereum does, so existence in the universe inherently possesses locality. In Ethereum, however, knowledge is global, and all executions and storage ultimately converge to the same consensus truth root. But only the verification phase requires global execution; ideally, computation itself should be as localized as possible. Storage and data cannot be eliminated and must exist globally; however, they can be compressed into cryptographic proofs incorporated into consensus, without requiring the underlying data to be replicated across the entire network. We generalize data availability design: relying on economic metrics to achieve the temporality of data, supported by network sharding. Even if the entire network reaches global consensus on "data availability," the access range of the data itself can still maintain privacy. The same applies to execution: only operations that intersect at the same address execution path need to compute within the same local view; all non-intersecting paths and sub-paths can compute in parallel to the maximum extent within their respective execution ranges, with network observers collaborating as needed. Aggregated execution and data throughput are evenly distributed, achieving generalization of execution and data availability at the architectural level. The inclusion, sorting, and privacy protection of underlying throughput rely on the entire network's multithreaded collaboration, rather than all nodes replicating a single-threaded execution.

The Limitations of Cryptographic Truth

Fundamentally, the truth source for correctness defined within the Ethereum system arises from a cultural consensus formed around protocol definitions (what the network can become). However, this alone cannot define what the network actually is in reality. The true state of the network since its inception must be deduced from external information; this information records the historical behaviors of all observers and the majority's understanding of the sequence of events. Given an instantaneous state and a set of operations, we can determine whether the operations that generate a new state conform to the protocol definition; however, we cannot confirm whether these operations and their timing can be jointly recognized by the broader observer community of Ethereum—this is the consensus problem.

The spatial dimension of Ethereum is built upon cryptography and underlying protocol components, ensuring that operations on the state machine can be statically verified; but whether these operations occurred and when they occurred depends on the subjective perceptions of network observers. This means Ethereum must define "observers" to measure the majority's representative opinions, thus interpreting the events that generate the network's instantaneous state. What makes Ethereum unique is that the definition of observers carries cultural ambiguity, with a significant amount of information lost in the strong subjectivity brought by the genesis block.

In contrast to Bitcoin: the genesis phase only has static protocol definitions, and the rewards from the genesis block cannot even be spent; the protocol did not hardcode any external preset conditions during the genesis phase. Even if Satoshi Nakamoto pre-mined tokens, under proof-of-work consensus, the cognitive definitions of observers possess cultural homogeneity, stemming from external energy inputs. Ethereum's pre-mining, however, effectively established a rule: the real definition and instantaneous state of the modern beacon chain are, to some extent, constrained by the definitions of observers (staked ETH) embedded in the genesis block.

Core logic: Strong subjectivity and observer definitions must come from the outside. Consortium chains and centralized systems hardcode operator roles within the protocol, subjectively setting observers in advance. In contrast, systems like Bitcoin only preset protocol definitions, relying on external universal cultural definitions of observers to form a majority understanding. For example, Bitcoin defines the network's real state as the chain confirmed by the most consumed computational power; its observer ontology is culturally homogeneous and highly abstract, closer to the universe itself. Ethereum also used proof-of-work before 2022, then transitioned to proof-of-stake, relying on the scarcity of ETH within Ethereum to construct a universal cultural understanding of observers. However, proof-of-stake uses the system's endogenous tokens as representatives of observers, meaning the token ontology is equivalent to the observer ontology, and the issue of subjective representation remains unresolved. A network that pre-mines stakable tokens from the genesis phase will encounter the same problems as centralized systems: the definition of observers existed before the genesis block was created and was written into the protocol, making it impossible to achieve a truly universal culture. Today's Ethereum is only partially affected by this issue: of the current 122 million ETH, 72 million come from pre-mining. This means that the majority understanding of proof-of-stake may be biased because, from the very beginning, specific entities were subjectively assigned observer identities. The remaining 50 million come from proof-of-work mining, and their use in the proof-of-stake system can be understood as reusing the ontology formed by external energy inputs from the past.

The above illustrates that the instantaneous protocol state originates from a set of observer ontologies that define the majority understanding. The beacon chain is a component within the Ethereum protocol that serves as the foundational truth for deducing instantaneous real states, with the workflow as follows: Genesis: Starting from the genesis state, pre-setting staking distribution and the initial state of the network and virtual machine. Ethereum's 2022 proof-of-stake genesis inherits the state of the original proof-of-work network from 2016. At the same time, a validator registry is configured, and validators stake tokens to gain voting rights.

• History: Tracing all votes cast by staking observers regarding the network state, sorting the history of observer cognition formation; sequentially accepting user behaviors that perceive the network and reach consensus, acknowledging the event sequence and existence recognized as true by the majority, while we can still independently conduct cryptographic verification.
• Current State: Reaching the latest network state recognized by the majority, achieving consensus, and sharing the normative state cognition of the virtual machine and validator registry with Ethereum observers.
• State Transition: At the top of the normative history, we vote together with other observers, collaboratively determining the next normative state based on the real-time behaviors of users within the virtual machine.

The subjective genesis state can also select recent checkpoints that we subjectively deem valid. The definitions of the network itself and the genesis state are both related to our strong subjective cognition. Based on protocol preset assumptions, accepting "this historical checkpoint I deem valid" as a recent truth assumption is weak subjectivity: essentially recognizing a statement as true within the subjective context defined by the protocol.

The trust assumption of the protocol: the supermajority of observers measured by staking (2/3) adheres to the honest standard defined by the protocol (unintentional dishonest behavior is also included in this definition). As long as this condition holds at any moment, the network can reach consensus on the current normative state; conversely, external observers cannot distinguish whether the current state comes from legitimate normative history or from malicious staking supermajority tampering and rewriting of history. Therefore, regardless of what network state you observe, you can only verify that the state has the potential to occur at the cryptographic level, but you cannot prove that the history generating the current state represents the cognition of an honest majority. The issue of historical cryptographic validity is even more subtle: the assumption that the staking majority is honest applies not only to the structure of the chain but also to all behaviors that occurred in history. In other words, whether historical events are correct only holds true within the subjective context of an honest majority. If the staking majority chooses to recognize a historically cryptographically invalid event, it means the staking majority is no longer honest, the assumption fails, and the validity of all content becomes ambiguous. Therefore, we always assume the existence of an honest majority; since this assumption supports the validity of everything else, merely conducting cryptographic verification of history without trusting the majority is of no practical significance. In practice, this is indeed the case: when an event appears in normative history that is "invalid" under your protocol definition, you cannot distinguish whether it is a malicious state alteration or a coordinated hard fork upgrade across the entire network, simply because your software version is outdated and cannot recognize it. The DAO fork is a typical case: the majority chose to recognize this cryptographically invalid event and wrote it into normative history. According to the old protocol definition, this event is invalid, but on a subjective level, the majority recognizes it as part of the main chain's history.

In summary: Cryptographic verification itself has inherent limitations. Within the framework of the protocol's definitions of validity and honesty, consensus allows the honest majority to collaboratively reach agreement; however, "what is honesty" is itself a subjective concept, paradoxically determined by the truth recognized by the majority. This further illustrates that the definition of Ethereum itself carries inherent subjectivity, and it is up to you to interpret what truth is. Even if you do not agree with the views of the majority of the network, no one can determine that your definition of Ethereum is less correct than others.

Ontological Simplification to Engineering Implementation

The above discussion summarizes: Cultural consensus at the protocol definition level serves as the initial subjective axiom of truth, defining what is correct within the rules of the protocol itself. This constructs a set of collaboratively operable universal virtual machine architecture; relying on the majority representation mechanism formed by external observer ontologies, consensus is generated, allowing Ethereum to become a globally shared computational reality. The actual operational logic of the network: users broadcast universal operations to the shared virtual machine, the network computers sort the operations, and vote on the timing, collectively arriving at the instantaneous state of the Ethereum network.

Culture is complex and varied, and this revolution is not perfect, but there are many ways to participate in realizing the vision of Ethereum. The status quo maintained by ACD is just a narrow perspective on defining Ethereum. You can completely propose different insights and even change the public's general understanding of the world computer. If you are willing to join, the door is always open.

If you believe in freedom, then welcome to the future. It is built on Ethereum.

References [1] Van Epps, T. (2026) Ethereum Core Protocol Economy: See: https://x.com/trent_vanepps/status/2092280371375157312 [2] Ethereum.org. (2026) Nodes and Clients: See: https://ethereum.org/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/ [3] Martin Becze mb@ethereum.org, Hudson Jameson hudson@ethereum.org, et al., "EIP‑1: EIP Purpose and Guidelines," Ethereum Improvement Proposal, No. 1, October 2015. See: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1. [4] Pooja Ranjan (@poojaranjan), Gavin John (@Pandapip1), Sam Wilson (@SamWilsn), et al., "EIP‑5069: EIP Editor's Handbook," Ethereum Improvement Proposal, No. 5069, May 2022. See: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-5069. [5] Tim Beiko (@timbeiko), Alex Stokes (@ralexstokes), Ansgar Dietrichs (@adietrichs), Nixo (@nixorokish), Parithosh Jayanthi (@parithosh), "EIP‑7723: Network Upgrade Inclusion Phase [Final Call]," Ethereum Improvement Proposal, No. 7723, June 2024. See: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7723.

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