What is EigenLayer's convoluted concept of intersubjective forking?

Ritu77

A fact can generally be divided into three categories:
Objective facts
Subjective facts
Intersubjective facts.

For example:

1. Objective facts, such as 1+1=2.

2. Subjective facts, such as someone thinks @0x_todd is handsome.
3. Intersubjective facts, a bit abstract, it comes from "social consensus", such as: ChatGPT is one of the leading AI today.
Intersubjective facts, it's not as definite as objective facts, nor as subjective as it is spoken.

It's a fact between subjects - in human terms - it's the consensus of the masses, although it may not be the truth.
If we look into Crypto, let's take a few examples:

1. Objective facts, such as the code executed by EVM, if it performs a certain function, it will definitely output a certain result.

2. Subjective facts, such as a tweet, I think @eigenlayer has allocated too little to early holders;
3. "Intersubjective" facts, also derived from "social consensus", such as, Bitcoin is the leader of crypto; or a node has done something wrong because it has concealed some data.

Nowadays, everyone knows what Re-staking is for:

Using ETH as a deposit, complete some verification work;

1. If the verification is successful, you earn a commission;
2. If it messes up, then the deposit is deducted.

But how do you judge whether you messed up or succeeded? Who will deduct the deposit?
This is a problem.

Verifying "objective facts" is fine, there are very clear judgment criteria. For example, whether a certain smart contract is executed successfully, this is easy to handle.

For verifying intersubjective facts, it's troublesome, the standards are not so clear. Would you dare to use $ETH as a deposit then? You definitely wouldn't.

So, Eigenlayer believes that for verifications related to intersubjective facts, ETH should no longer be used for re-staking, but rather $Eigen tokens.

This still doesn't solve our problem from earlier. How do you judge whether you messed up or succeeded?

1. Relying on majority voting? Then it will also bring about "majority tyranny", for example, large holders can collude to eliminate small holders.
2. Relying on committee rulings? Then what's the point of being in crypto?

Therefore, Eigen token Staking plans to use a third approach:

3. Relying on fork (split). If there is indeed a huge divergence around an "intersubjective fact", then there is one last resort, which is to fork.

If you (and those on your side) think that others are wrong, even if you don't currently hold the majority of seats, then you can fork the token directly and confiscate others'.

Note, this is the final move.

So what is a huge divergence around an "intersubjective fact"?
For example, back then, Trump failed to win re-election by a small margin, and Biden was elected as the 46th President of the United States, but in a brief window, Trump claimed that Biden "stole" his votes and that he was the true legitimate 46th President of the United States.

Before this matter was settled, there must have been many people who firmly believed that Trump was the true 46th President, and they had no intention of subjectively doing evil, and neither side's supporters could convince the other.

Eigenlayer believes that the best solution to solve such problems: is to fork the token to each other, let time verify everything, because eventually one side will gradually lose legitimacy and approach zero.
So:

1. In the eyes of Trump supporters (that is, the Trump version of EIGEN), they will confiscate all deposits of Biden supporters;
2. In the perspective of Biden supporters (that is, the Biden version of EIGEN), they will confiscate all deposits of Trump supporters.

The final result is clear, Trump is not the 46th President in the public eye, the Trump version of EIGEN eventually returns to zero, so confiscating the tokens of Biden supporters doesn't matter, after all, they are all 0.

Conversely, Biden is the 46th President in the public eye, the Biden version of EIGEN becomes the legitimate version of EIGEN, and the tokens of Trump supporters were confiscated before, and they paid the price.

This is the problem that intersubjective forking seeks to solve.

So, these must be done with EIGEN coins, not with ETH. ETH forking is too difficult, and it's not conducive to ETH security. Of course, this also definitely has the selfishness of locking up one's own tokens as much as possible.

In addition, there is another small detail, EIGEN is a dual-token model.
One is a standard ERC-20 token, it does not Fork, and can be used on exchanges or in DeFi.

One is the token truly used to judge facts. If there is indeed

a huge divergence, it theoretically can fork indefinitely.
These two tokens are isolated, but have a certain mapping relationship, interested parties can refer to the white paper, and it is not repeated here.

To summarize, Eigenlayer has abstracted a new type of fact (intersubjective), which cannot be solved by previous solutions (ETH Restaking), so it proposes a new solution (Staking and Slashing based on EIGEN tokens), that is to issue a new work token $EIGEN.

Ebunker, Ethereum long-term believer, focuses on Ethereum's technical development, proposal upgrades, and community changes for the first time, and shares research and views on Ethereum's key track such as Staking, L2, DeFi, etc.
Currently, Ebunker includes Ebunker Pool (unmanaged Ethereum Staking mining pool) and Ebunker Venture (maximize Ethereum investment) and other businesses.

Yamini003

Theoretical issues aren't a big deal; the key is to grasp them well.

Ritu13

Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to seek some understanding about this.

Isha000

Just take some things with a grain of salt, don't take them too seriously.