The Road to Decentralization of Ethereum: Analyzing the Key Significance of "Exit Test"

At the EthCC conference in France, the founder of Ethereum presented a thought-provoking point: if Ethereum cannot achieve true Decentralization, its future may face a survival crisis. To this end, he proposed three key testing criteria to assess the protocol's decentralization capability: exit test, internal attack test, and trusted computing base test.

Among them, exiting the test is considered the most fundamental and important part. It addresses a core issue: if the project team disbands or the platform goes offline, can users still safely withdraw their assets and complete interactions?

The Essence of Exiting the Test

The core of the exit test lies in verifying whether the project allows users to independently exit, withdraw assets, and interact on-chain even when the development team is completely "out of contact." This is more like a safety clause, which does not emphasize the completeness of daily functions, but rather tests whether the protocol truly achieves "Decentralization" under extreme conditions.

As early as 2022, the founder of Ethereum criticized the "auxiliary wheel" architecture of most Rollups, pointing out that they rely on centralized operation and manual intervention to ensure security. A certain evaluation platform categorized Rollups into three stages of Decentralization, reflecting their dependence on manual intervention.

The Importance of Exit Testing

The exit test is essentially a touchstone for verifying whether the protocol can truly achieve decentralization. It is not only about censorship resistance but also about whether users still retain asset sovereignty in extreme situations.

For mainstream Rollups, although mechanisms such as "escape pods" are in place, many projects still retain "upgradeable contracts" and even "super admin" privileges. These mechanisms, which seem to be designed for emergencies, may actually become potential risk windows.

The protocol that truly passes the exit test allows users to independently complete operations through on-chain tools and third-party front ends, even if all nodes go offline and all operators leave. This is not just a technical issue, but also a manifestation of the Web3 philosophy.

Application of Exit Testing in the Web3 Ecosystem

In fact, the concept of exit testing has been widely applied in other areas of Web3. Take wallets as an example; most mainstream Web3 wallets allow users to export their private keys or seed phrases, enabling them to easily transfer assets to any wallet software or hardware device. This design turns users from mere "experiencers" of Web3 products into true "owners" with asset sovereignty.

Decentralization Future

The three core tests proposed by the founder of Ethereum constitute the "decentralized foundation framework" for the long-term sustainable development of Ethereum, aiming to achieve the idea of "trustless verification." In the Web3 world, true trust comes from verifiability. Only through transparent mathematics and algorithms, allowing users to verify at any time, can concerns about external factors such as the moral integrity of the project team be alleviated.

If Ethereum fails to achieve this, it may eventually become a generational memory, forgotten by history like many once-glorious but ultimately mediocre things. Therefore, promoting the realization of decentralization through standards such as exiting tests is crucial for the long-term development of Ethereum and the entire Web3 ecosystem.