The Ethereum ecosystem, built on principles of decentralization and trustless interactions, finds itself in an interesting position when it comes to its own communication infrastructure. While the protocol itself champions decentralization, many of its core developers and community members primarily coordinate through centralized platforms like Discord and Twitter, raising questions about consistency with the project's fundamental values.
The Current Landscape
Ethereum's development discussions, governance debates, and community engagement largely take place on Discord servers and Twitter feeds. The Ethereum Foundation, ConsenSys, and numerous other Ethereum-focused organizations maintain active presences on these platforms, using them for everything from technical coordination to community announcements.
Discord serves as the primary hub for real-time developer discussions, with channels dedicated to specific EIPs, research topics, and implementation details. Twitter, meanwhile, has become the de facto platform for broader community engagement, announcements, and public discourse about Ethereum's direction.
The Available Alternatives
Several decentralized communication platforms exist that align more closely with Ethereum's philosophical stance:
Status, built on Ethereum itself, offers encrypted messaging and a Web3 browser. Matrix provides a decentralized chat protocol with end-to-end encryption. Farcaster and Bluesky represent attempts to decentralize social media, offering alternatives to Twitter's centralized model.
Understanding the Paradox
The preference for centralized platforms stems from practical considerations rather than philosophical inconsistency. Discord and Twitter offer:
Established user bases and network effects
Reliable infrastructure and proven scalability
Familiar interfaces and lower barriers to entry
Robust feature sets developed over years
Immediate accessibility for newcomers
The Practical Challenges
Transitioning to decentralized platforms presents several obstacles:
Network effects pose a significant challenge – developers need to be where the community already exists
Decentralized alternatives often lack the polish and reliability of their centralized counterparts
The overhead of running and maintaining decentralized communication infrastructure can distract from core protocol development
Beyond Simple Hypocrisy
Rather than pure hypocrisy, this situation reflects the complex reality of building decentralized systems in a centralized world. The Ethereum community's choice of communication tools represents a pragmatic compromise between ideological purity and practical necessity.
Many developers acknowledge this contradiction but view it as a temporary state. They argue that the focus should be on building robust decentralized infrastructure for financial and computational systems first, with communication platforms to follow as the technology matures.
Moving Forward
The community's reliance on centralized communication tools might best be viewed as a bridge strategy. While working toward a decentralized future, developers are using the most effective tools currently available to build that future.
Several initiatives are already underway to gradually transition more communication to decentralized platforms:
Increasing support for decentralized alternatives in documentation and community resources
Maintaining mirrors of critical discussions on decentralized platforms
Supporting the development of more user-friendly decentralized communication tools
Conclusion
The principle of "dogfooding" – using your own products or similar solutions in your space – is more than just a development practice; it's a fundamental form of reciprocity within the developer community. When Ethereum developers ask users to trust new, sometimes unpolished decentralized applications, they implicitly ask them to accept certain compromises in the name of decentralization. This creates a moral imperative for developers to demonstrate the same willingness to embrace emerging decentralized alternatives in their own workflows.
By continuing to rely primarily on centralized platforms, the Ethereum community risks undermining its own message. Each time a developer chooses Discord over Matrix, or Twitter over Farcaster, they tacitly signal that the advantages of centralized systems outweigh the values of decentralization. This message becomes particularly problematic when the same developers advocate for users to adopt new, potentially less polished decentralized alternatives in other contexts.
The path forward requires a shift in perspective: rather than viewing decentralized communication platforms as options to adopt once they match centralized alternatives in polish and convenience, the community should see their adoption as an essential part of the development process itself. This means accepting some inconvenience and reduced functionality in service of the larger goal – just as we ask our users to do.
Real change starts with leading by example. By actively using and contributing to decentralized communication platforms, developers not only help these platforms improve but also demonstrate authentic commitment to the principles they champion. This kind of dogfooding isn't just about testing products; it's about building credibility and showing that the community truly believes in the decentralized future it's working to create.
Collect this post as an NFT.
Thinking out loud about the problems of still using Discord in 2025. https://paragraph.xyz/@dfern.eth/the-communication-paradox
from a conversation today in our discord server
Excellent response 👏
Where has Discord announced this? (I vaguely recall some blowback from showing off an Ethereum wallet connection UI prototype, is that what you are referring to?)
https://discord.com/blog/discords-next-chapter
Thanks, I hadn't seen this. It sounds like a move away from supporting non-gaming communities, but it doesn't explicitly call out web3. It leads to the same conclusion though: it's not a reliable platform to depend on.
Had similar thoughts every time someone has asked me for my Telegram handle (which does not exist) and didn't have an account on any less-centralized platform. I can understand defaulting to asking about centralized platforms first, but the lack of willingness to create an account elsewhere points to a deeper problem.
Oh man, I forgot Telegram! Man...I try to block it out of my memory that I still have an account, but sometimes I need it for IRL meetups...in my defence, I mostly just show up and pitch them Farcaster, Bluesky, etc.
The truth hurts to read "By continuing to rely primarily on centralized platforms, the Ethereum community risks undermining its own message. Each time a developer chooses Discord over Matrix, or Twitter over Farcaster, they tacitly signal that the advantages of centralized systems outweigh the values of decentralization." Because I don't see the dynamic changing anytime soon
wen commitment from EF researchers to dual-post on Farcaster and Twitter?
A lot of them do! To be fair, I'm actually more miffed about Discord than Twitter. At least Twitter is ostensibly public, like GitHub or Pastebin. Discord is always an invite-by-link system, which is private by default. So if Discord were to die, nobody could archive the history.
It's really the worst non-dev influencers who will put .eth in their handles and then never use FC because their following on Twitter is already massive and they prefer the algo that elevates their engagement bait.
It's no surprise discord is the revealed preference over matrix, matrix sucks. The ceo of element also spends more time justifying bad decisions on hacker news rather than actually responding to criticism by fixing the problems, like when home servers could add devices on behalf of users and subvert E2EE but this is "good, actually™️"
@dfern.eth thots?
First, I wasn't aware of the egomaniac CEO. It looks like some security researchers found some valid problems and they seem to have patched them now [https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/matrix-patches-vulnerabilities-that-completely-subvert-e2ee-guarantees/]. I agree it's incredibly poor form. It's human nature to be defensive, but as someone building privacy tools, you need to be able to take a beat & be magnanimous and grateful to anyone who is looking over your code, even if you don't think everything they found is an "Unbreak Now!" priority bug. That being said, my Bayesian prior for P(egomaniac | opensource CEO) = 0.80, I was going to list some names, but it would probably be shorter to list who isn't one. 1/N
what an interesting coincidence 🙂 keep an eye out for Christmas Day
🤯 wowow
Great food for thought, thank you
Exploring the paradox of Ethereum's reliance on centralized communication tools while promoting decentralization, this post discusses pragmatic compromises and the importance of moving toward decentralized platforms. @dfern.eth