On September 2, the co-founder of Matter Labs, Alex Gluchowski, proposed launching an Ethereum court to assist in settling disputes. In his advanced report, the executive explained that the proposed Ethereum court will resemble the current court system to adjudicate disagreements between key players in the crypto sector.
Gluchowski shared his proposal for the Ethereum Court with the X community (formerly Twitter) outlining the key fearture of the court. The CEO suggested that the Ethereum Court operate similarly to the US Supreme Court.
Features of Proposed Ethereum Court
He anticipates that the new court will support settling disputes, including the smart contracts disagreement that might arise. The court will enable the Ethereum proponent to amicably resolve their issues without the involvement of conventional lawyers or courts.
Additionally, the Ethereum court aims at shielding the protocols from political interference. The CEO added that they support Ethereum to be a more robust network.
In his report, Gluchowski explained that the disputes and emergency upgrades will be addressed at the on-chain courts. At the same time, the court of final appeal will integrate the Ethereum layer 1 soft fork, where final decisions will be made.
He suggested that governance with standard and emergency upgrade features will be linked to each protocol. The executive proposed that a special contract on the network will be used for appealing.
The proposed development on Ethereum aims to support the implementation of the law. Gluchowski noted that the user will be allowed to appeal and challenge the court decision through the emergency upgrade linked to the protocol.
Structure of Ethereum Court
Guided by the hierarchical court system, the appellant must deposit bail to proceed with the petition. The executive admitted that the Ethereum Supreme Court will deal with appeal cases.
The Matter Labs boss noted that with the crypto sector’s dynamism, he expected protocols such as Aave and Uniswap to settle disputes in existing courts such as the CourtUnchained or the JusticeDAO. He stated that if the abovementioned decision fails to resolve the conflict, the defendant or the complainant can request the Ethereum Supreme Court to review the ruling.
Therefore, to support the legal process on the lower and higher courts, Gluchowski explained the significance of developing cutting-edge social consensus layers to help operate the on-chain court system. He anticipates setting up the Ethereum hierarchical courts to be much more expensive. Gluchowski urged the Ethereum community to only present “truly extraordinary cases” before the court due to the cost.
In the concluding statement, Gluchowski revisited several existing solutions to smart contract disputes. He blamed the authority for failing to effectively implement the dispute resolution on-chain platforms.
Gluchowski argued that the time-locked features on the smart contracts were considered unsuitable in times of emergency. He explained the need for a security council to address smart contract issues.
Occassionally the security council temporarily suspends the operations of the smart contract to enhance security of the system. While any emergency upgrade undergoes a governance approval process.
Security of Ethereum Network
However, in the long run, Gluchowski projects that the security council and time-locked features will fail to safeguard the Ethereum users from malicious attacks. The Ethereum Layer 2 software owns customers’ assets worth billions of dollars. However, in case of a system vulnerability or hack, customers’ assets locked on the Ethereum layer 2 application, such as the zkSync rollups, will be lost entirely.
The Matter Labs co-founder was pleased to announce plans to fund the development of the Ethereum court. He portrayed his willingness to work with zkSync, an Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution owned by Matter Labs, to finance critical research for the development of the Ethereum court.
Gluchowski’s proposal challenged Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, who urged the developers to stop overburdening the protocol. In his May post, Butein explained the risk of overburdening the Ethereum social consensus layers.
He lamented that with the increased activities on the Ethereum network the community will be unable to effectively monitor the network and address issues that might compromise the performance of the protocols.
