Client diversity in the Ethereum blockchain refers to the use of multiple independent implementations of the Ethereum protocol. This effectively enhances network resilience by reducing reliance on any single software client implementation. With client diversity, a single bug cannot tear the whole network down. However, despite multiple production-grade client implementations being available, there is still a heavily skewed distribution of clients in Ethereum. This is a concern for the community. In this paper, we introduce a novel conceptual framework for client diversity. The core goal is to improve the network resilience as a systemic property. Our key insight is to leverage economic incentives and verifiable execution to encourage the adoption of minority clients, thereby fostering a more robust blockchain ecosystem. Concretely, we propose to unambiguously and provably identify the client implementation used by any protocol participant, and to use this information to incentivize the usage of minority clients by offering higher participation rewards. We outline a detailed blueprint for our conceptual framework, in the realm of Ethereum. Our proposal is a game changer for improving client diversity of blockchains. Ultimately, it applies to strengthening the resilience of any decentralized distributed systems.

翻译：以太坊区块链中的客户端多样性指的是使用多个独立的以太坊协议实现。这通过减少对单一软件客户端实现的依赖，有效增强了网络韧性。在客户端多样性的情况下，单个漏洞无法导致整个网络崩溃。然而，尽管存在多个生产级客户端实现，以太坊中的客户端分布仍然严重失衡。这是社区关注的一个问题。本文提出了一种新颖的客户端多样性概念框架，其核心目标是提升作为系统属性的网络韧性。我们的关键见解是利用经济激励与可验证执行来鼓励采用少数客户端，从而培育更健壮的区块链生态系统。具体而言，我们建议明确且可证明地识别任何协议参与者所使用的客户端实现，并利用此信息通过提供更高的参与奖励来激励少数客户端的使用。我们在以太坊领域内概述了该概念框架的详细蓝图。我们的提案是改善区块链客户端多样性的变革性方案。最终，它适用于增强任何去中心化分布式系统的韧性。