leandro.ferrigno

LAMBDA ALL THE THINGS

A few weeks ago I said there was a seismic change in Ethereum's social layer about to happen. It's happening. Multiple big infrastructure players that most users don't know about are starting to collaborate and build together, doubling down on ETH and the Ethereum network. Follow @blockspaceforum to keep up with it. The biggest block builder (@titanbuilderxyz), the biggest relay (@ultrasoundmoney), @ETHGasOfficial, @Commit_Boost (38% network adoption), @QuasarBuilder, @primev_xyz, @nuconstruct, @blocknative, @fabric_ethereum, researchers from the @ethereumfndn, and many others are all coordinating. Many of us realized that they had to team up and work closely together to make our opinions stronger and speed up our ability to deliver. In the last 5 years @class_lambda built many of the most relevant zkVMs and Ethereum L2s. Last year we went all in on @ethereum L1. In a year we built @ethrex_client, one of the fastest production ready execution clients at about 60k lines of code. We're coordinating with big stakers and the MEV pipeline to grow its adoption while also shipping multiple products around it. We're building a new RISC-V zkVM with @alignedlayer and @3miLabs that I think will become a standard for L1 proving and @eth_proofs in the short term. We're working on @leanEthereum by building our own @ethlambda_lean client. We helped develop the @Commit_Boost sidecar that standardizes communication between validators and third party protocols. We're happy to have helped build a critical piece of software that is now running on 38% of the Ethereum network. We also started collaborating with @titanbuilderxyz on different things under @kubimensah's lead. Hopefully soon we'll be working closely with @alextes and @ultrasoundrelay too! There's more I want to share but can't yet. For now I can say that @class_lambda is part of the @blockspaceforum process and I'm very excited about what's coming. Keep an eye on what we will be doing, I promise it's gonna get interesting.

Community is not a group of people clapping in agreement. It’s the opposite. It’s a group of different people with conflicting interests trying to find the best outcome for everyone. The fact that there is strong debate in CT is good. I’ve been thinking a lot about what has happened to @ethereum over the last two years: the slowdown in execution, the loss of confidence, and the shrinking influence across the industry. Things have improved recently, and Buenos Aires Devconnect was miles ahead of Bangkok Devcon, but the core problem remains unresolved. The initiatives proposed so far are voluntaristic and depend on a few individuals rather than structural changes. I just launched my blog and I’m writing a longer essay with concrete examples and a more philosophical angle. This is the first draft of the core thesis. At the center of everything there is a contradiction: harmony vs competence. The leadership thesis, and @VitalikButerin, is simple: power corrupts, so the only safeguard is preventing anyone from gaining power. I understand the concern. But the solution is where we diverge. At one point many important people of Ethereum even stopped tweeting. Their answer has been to prioritize harmony above all else. That’s why the protocol barely changed after the Merge and why the gas limit stayed low. If nothing can change, no new actors can emerge. The mission became: avoid disruption, avoid conflict, avoid the rise of a new corrupt leader. From there you get alignment politics instead of open debate. Advancement through proximity and approval rather than measurable execution. The mechanism becomes social, not technical. It’s the opposite of what made Linux succeed. Linux thrived because Linus Torvalds only cared about code quality and the best ideas winning. This has a tragic consequence: when you suppress discussion and reward alignment out of fear of new leaders emerging, you destroy the conditions for new blood to arise. Innovation slows down to preserve harmony. Progress requires conflict, science advances through disagreement, engineering through iteration, and markets through competition. Ideas and people HAVE to collide to find the best idea possible. Systems that suppress conflict stagnate because hierarchy replaces merit. @ameensol has been saying something similar but I don't agree with his take about the fact that this is related with socialism. To me the core problem is the destruction of the feedback loop between decisions taken by leaders and the outcomes they get. Ethereum cannot remain global, open, and relevant while avoiding debate. Harmony without productive conflict becomes centralization. Avoid conflict and you avoid improvement; avoid debate and you avoid new talent. Vitalik wrote on March 1st, 2025: "What Ethereum needs is a lot of young blood who share the cypherpunk vision. All OGs are jaded. It’s on the next generation now." He’s right. But the reason this is happening is because of the incentive structure created by the leadership itself. Like in Brave New World, systems built to numb conflict only work if there is no outside competition. Ethereum no longer lives in a world without rivals. The crisis at the end of last year and start of this year happened because Solana was winning market share. Ethereum has to adapt to this reality. The idea that power corrupts is true, but it is also historically used by leaders to gatekeep, prevent renewal, and retain power. The funny thing is that I agree with Reth and @paradigm on the roadmap priorities. In that sense, I’m closer to their views than to the historical EF leadership. I always believed that if Ethereum doesn't acclerate we will lose. The difference is that I believe these debates must happen inside Ethereum rather than in another L1, openly, and we need to push for structural change. Pointing these things out has a cost. One of the latest defenses against our arguments has been claiming we seek attention or that we are troublemakers. Some of the people we used to talk with also stopped answering. Gladly many, if not most actors, started telling us that we are right but they can't say things openly because this has a cost for them too. This only proves the point: there is a culture of preventing debate to maintain the status quo. Anyone who knows us knows we defend what we believe, right or wrong, not for attention or financial motivation. We’ve worked across multiple industries without issue and with long-term clients. We care about productivity and delivery, period. When people join Lambda they read @RayDalio's ideas. Dalio believes the highest performing organizations run on idea meritocracy driven by radical truth and radical transparency. Everyone speaks openly, nothing is hidden, the best ideas win regardless of hierarchy. Mistakes and disagreements are embraced because being challenged is the path to improvement. Suppressing truth out of fear of social consequences is the greatest tragedy that prevents excellence. I believe Ethereum is suffering from exactly this. At @class_lambda we believe in @ethereum as the unbiased verifiable computer. We believe this mission is bigger than any person. And we will fight for what we think is right. If you want to be a global protocol and you want new cypherpunk blood then accept the fact that they will criticize you and debate openly rather than avoiding it.

Thanks @eth_proofs for letting us share our love for ZK and @ethereum. Our CTO @lean_knack spoke about @ethrex_client. We want everyone to integrate their zkVM with us. We made it super easy. We already integrated with @SuccinctLabs, @RiscZero, @ziskvm and we’re integrating with @brevis_zk and @openvm_org. We will do everything we can to make Ethrex the best Rust execution client and the easiest and fastest client to prove. I highly recommend you checking it out!