Key takeaways:
- Alex Gluchowski has proposed an Ethereum court system that resembles a hierarchical court system like the one seen in the real world.
- The hierarchy of on-chain courts would manage disputes and emergency upgrades, according to Gluchowski’s notion.
Alex Gluchowski, co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, has proposed an Ethereum court system that resembles a hierarchical court system like the one seen in the real world.
In a post on X (Twitter) on September 2, Gluchowski proposed the notion of an “Ethereum Supreme Court” that would function similarly to the US Supreme Court as a last resort for parties to settle smart contract disputes before going to a regular lawyer or court. As said by Gluchowski:
“The most important function of such a system will be to protect protocols against political inference from the outside. It will serve as a great deterrence mechanism, and will elevate the role of Ethereum as a powerful network state,”
The hierarchy of on-chain courts would manage disputes and emergency upgrades, according to Gluchowski’s notion. However, an Ethereum layer-1 soft fork serving as the “Court of Final Appeal” would be the last resort.
According to Gluchowski, every protocol in this system would have its own governance, including regular and emergency upgrading processes and a specific contract that might start an appeal.
Any user may raise an objection to the higher court during the appeal period that follows an emergency protocol upgrade. They will, however, be required to post a predetermined bail deposit.
According to Gluchowski, each court designates the higher court to which an appeal should be made, with the Ethereum Supreme Court acting as the appellants’ last resort.
In a hypothetical court hierarchy, protocols like MakerDAO and Uniswap would argue cases before courts like CourtUnchained or JusticeDAO. A party may appeal a judgment made by those courts to the Ethereum Supreme Court.
However, Gluchowski admitted that for the on-chain court system to function, there would need to be a robust social agreement. He continued by saying that only “truly extraordinary” cases will be presented before it due to the cost.
“likely be worthy of the attention of the entire Layer-0 (the social consensus) of Ethereum. Think of a bug in @Uniswap, a major L2, a Defi protocol with a systemic risk, etc.”
Although Gluchowski acknowledged that there are currently several remedies to these problems, he contended that they are ineffective.
Gluchowski declared that he and the staff at zkSync, a Matter Labs-developed layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum, would gladly pay for the proposal’s study.
