Why is protocol simplicity the key to Ethereum's long-term survival

【BitPush】Recently, I came across a very interesting perspective: How important is protocol simplicity?

The core logic is actually quite straightforward—no matter how perfectly you design the decentralization level, if the protocol itself becomes bloated due to hundreds of thousands of lines of code or complex cryptography, it’s all for nothing in the end. It’s like building a house: no matter how good your foundation and design are, if it’s filled with useless decorations, problems will still arise.

Take Ethereum as an example. The current challenge lies here. To meet various application needs, more and more features are added, but the problems come along with them—code becomes complex, and backward compatibility requirements mean old features can never be removed. Ultimately, the protocol becomes like a hard drive that can’t fit anything else; nothing can be deleted, and everything must be retained.

How to solve this? The approach is as follows:

Simplification: First, be ruthless—reduce unnecessary lines of code, cut out complex and inefficient technical dependencies, and strengthen the design of invariants.

Cleaning: This can be done in small-scale or large-scale ways. Small-scale is like cleaning up junk files; large-scale is like upgrading from PoW directly to PoS architecture. Alternatively, use compatibility solutions like Rosetta to gradually migrate those low-frequency, complex functions to the smart contract layer.

In the long run, the benefit of doing this is to slow down the pace of protocol evolution, preserving truly valuable innovations, rather than letting useless features become a permanent burden. This is of great significance for the long-term survival and maintainability of blockchain.