EIP authors and champions are an important force for Getting Shit Done. They are the ones who wrangle all the other devs and really direct our effort and energy. When a scheduling opportunity presents itself, we expect them to pounce on it, as proved by recent jokes about our inability to ship a “small fork” (this hasn’t been done since the days of the difficulty bomb). Lets call this force Ethereums Ambition.

Currently the only counter force to the Ambition is when the content of a hard fork “feels too big”, which is subjective and an inherent Appeal to Authority. This is where Ambition meets (perceived or predicted) Reality, and those with the most experience and history tend to have the most seasoned intuition on what will “fit”. Things that "won't fit" are likely to take much longer than our hoped for 1-2 hard forks per year.

Some aspects of this tension between the Ambition and Authority are features, some are bugs. I think the open, subjective, free form discussions of what is most important to Ethereum at the moment, and in the foreseeable future, are good and effective and working as designed.

We all know “feels too big” when we see it, but we also have differing ideas on what SHOULD fit, and different priorities on what is best for Ethereum next.

This to me looks like a recipe for stalemate. When more EIPS are CFI’d than will fit, we search for a solution by simply grinding each other down with the repeated, sometimes stale, conversations. We can joke about our lack of restraint, but that’s on us. We are the only ones who can control that, and are thus responsible for it. I think we can develop a more efficient, objective, repeatable process for scheduling so we can leave some air in the room for the deeper problems.

So, what do?

The good news is I think other people feel this way too, and I’m kind of sensing the need for a stronger, more objective counterforce to the Ambition in the zeitgeist. There have been a number of suggestions recently of more objective, reproducible criteria for determining if something will fit.

Recent relevant suggestions
- What’s the difference between splitting Pectra and reassigning EIPS to Fusaka?
- when a late EIP comes in, 2 come out
- nothing gets CFI’d till it has test automation in place, and scaling estimates that we find plausible.

These are good ideas! And now is the time to seriously consider and adopt some of them, and start taking our responsibility a lot more seriously.

Lets give the term CFI’d some actual teeth.