6 Key Points in Vitalik Buterin’s Vision for Ethereum Presented at EthCC

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined his vision for the second-largest project’s future at the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris on Thursday.

The vision included an increased focus on security, stability, and decentralization, as well as the following key points:

1. Ethereum is “55% complete once we finish the Merge.” Buterin compared this to the view he said is common in the Bitcoin (BTC) community, where people – according to Buterin – see Bitcoin as 80% complete.
2. Ethereum should, over time, “settle down.” A lot of innovations have happened or are in the process of happening, including the famous EIP-1559 and the transition to proof-of-stake (PoS), the Ethereum co-founder explained. He noted that “at some point, the rate of change for the protocol is going to have to slow down.” Ethereum will then “look somewhat more like a system that optimizes for safety and predictability, and less like an ecosystem that optimizes for impressing and dazzling people,” he said.
3. Buterin warned against adding support for multiple virtual machines, and getting too comfortable with technologies like SNARKs (succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge), and said it is a danger if Ethereum becomes so complex that “no single person can understand the whole protocol.”
4. Instead of increasing complexity, the focus should be on decentralization, Buterin opined. He said that this includes having an easy-to-use light client for the consensus layer, execution layer, and Layer-2’s “as a default,” have better support for home stakers, and make sure it’s possible to run a full node on lighter hardware.
5. In terms of changes that are worth making in the future, Buterin pointed to upgrades for quantum resistance as one such change. Quantum computers are coming he said, adding that “once quantum computers come, we have to upgrade to different cryptography.”
6. Commenting on the merits of PoS, Buterin admitted that transitioning to it is “a big change” and said there are also “lots of benefits.” He added that the few remaining proof-of-work (PoW) supporters that exist in the Ethereum community can use Ethereum Classic (ETC) instead. They have “a welcoming community,” and it is “a totally fine chain,” he said about the blockchain that split from Ethereum after a major hack in 2016.

Watch the entire talk below:

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– Ethereum Merge Date Proposed for September
– Vitalik Buterin Confirms Post-Merge Ethereum Centralization Concerns, Urges Not to ‘Overly Catastrophize’ It

– Contradictory Vitalik Buterin Says He Wants a More Bitcoin-like Ethereum
– Ethereum Won’t Hide From Quantum Computers Behind PoS Shield

– 2022, the Year Layer 2 Takes Off
– Ethereum Classic Rallies Again, Outperforms Ethereum YTD – But What Does History Show?