0. Don't overload Ethereum's consensus

a) Two Kinds of Consensus

When discussing consensus in a blockchain network, it's important to note that there are two distinct types of “consensus”:

• Consensus Algorithm: This encompasses the entire stack of protocols, incentives, and ideas that enable a network of nodes to agree on the state of a blockchain.

• Social Consensus: This is the process by which individuals come to an agreement on a change that will be made to a blockchain.

These two types of consensus also differ in their composition:

• Consensus Algorithm: It's written in code. For example, the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism.

• Social Consensus: It's not written in code. For example, governance.

Generally speaking, fixing bugs in the consensus algorithm is easier to accomplish, such as the recent Ethereum inactivity leak that was eventually resolved through the robustness of the consensus protocol itself with some code maintenance, without the involvement of social consensus.

If the social consensus level needs to be altered, then there are more serious issues involved that may lead to eventual forking of the community. For instance, Solana downtime often requires human intervention to restart the network, which has more severe consequences than the previous Ethereum example.

b) Reusing Two Kinds of Consensus

According to Vitalik, reusing validator sets (reusing an existing cryptoeconomic base of consensus algorithm) is low-risk and acceptable, whereas overloading (reusing) social consensus is very dangerous.

Vitalik believes that a blockchain network should be objective, simple, purely mathematical, and neutral. Introducing conflicts from the outside world can affect the network and its minimalism and even cause the community to fork. This ultimately turns the blockchain from a trusted neutral computation platform into a mere financial tool.

For a specific use case, Ethereum-based applications or protocols reusing the Ethereum validator set (such as the restaking primitive and rollup) cannot expect Ethereum to underwrite their errors by forking them.

1. Case of Hyper Oracle

Hyper Oracle is a zkOracle protocol that provides powerful computing capabilities for Ethereum's smart contracts. This allows developers to programmatically define off-chain computations while ensuring computational trust through zero-knowledge proofs.

Similar to ZK Rollup, the Hyper Oracle network verifies off-chain computations through smart contracts. This approach leverages Ethereum's validator set and consensus, which avoids the need for a new validator set or network. This maintains Ethereum's original cryptoeconomic foundation and ensures scalability.

Additionally, the Hyper Oracle network acts as an oracle or middleware network. The computation data source of Hyper Oracle (zkPoS, proving Ethereum consensus through zkSNARK) is based on Ethereum network consensus. Moreover, the source of the Hyper Oracle network relies on Ethereum's social consensus. Hyper Oracle does not jeopardize Ethereum's consensus's safety or performance, but rather contributes to the maintenance of Ethereum consensus just like light client bridge. This approach ensures the system's robustness, neutrality, and objective decentralized computing platform.

2. Case of World Supercomputer

World Supercomputer connects three topologically heterogeneous P2P networks using zero-knowledge proofs. Ethereum serves as the consensus ledger while Hyper Oracle functions as the computation network and storage rollup like EthStorage acts as the storage network.

The World Supercomputer proposes a new network design to expand Ethereum's capabilities as a World Computer. This design reuses the same cryptoeconomic and trust base as Ethereum. Specialized networks such as Hyper Oracle and EthStorage do not introduce new cryptoeconomic mechanisms, but instead inherit Ethereum's trust assumptions to improve the computation and storage capabilities of the entire network.

The World Supercomputer concept strengthens Ethereum's social consensus by using Ethereum as the consensus ledger to form the former's base consensus. The expanded compute and storage capabilities enable greater end-to-end decentralization and more powerful applications within the Ethereum community.

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