Key Points
- Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, shares insights on the future of the protocol, focusing on “The Merge”.
- Buterin proposes potential solutions to improve Ethereum’s stability, performance, and capacity.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, recently shared his thoughts on the future of the Ethereum protocol, with a particular focus on “The Merge”.
Two years ago, Ethereum transitioned from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) model to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, a process known as The Merge. Buterin’s latest insights aim to enhance Ethereum’s stability, performance, and capacity while mitigating centralization risks.
The Core Goals to Revamp Ethereum
Buterin acknowledges that while the PoS mechanism has brought some improvements to the Ethereum network, there is still room for enhancement. His proposal for improving the consensus algorithm revolves around two main objectives: achieving single-slot finality and democratising staking.
At present, it takes approximately 15 minutes to finalize a block, and a significant 32 ETH is required to become a staker. These operational terms were established at the beginning to maximize the number of validators that can stake, minimize the time of finality, and reduce the overhead of running a node.
However, these goals have sometimes been in conflict. For example, requiring each validator to sign two messages for economic finality to occur means that a high number of validators will require more time to process signatures.
Ideally, Ethereum would adopt a native committee-based approach where all validators participate to achieve economic finality. But Buterin notes this approach is flawed, as it could potentially lead to a 51% attack, where an attacker with 51% control can revert a finalized block or delay finality.
Proposal to Achieve These Goals
To address these issues, Buterin proposed three possible solutions. Firstly, he suggests improving the signature aggregation protocol with ZK-SNARKs to allow the processing of signatures from millions of validators in each slot. Secondly, he proposes introducing the Orbit committee mechanism, where a randomly selected medium-sized committee is responsible for finalizing the chain.
Lastly, Buterin suggests implementing a two-tier staking system with two classes of stakers, one with a higher requirement and the other with a lower deposit requirement.
The ultimate goal of these proposals is to align Ethereum’s properties with those of Layer 1 chains, which prioritize performance and are more centralized. Ethereum could benefit from the increased security that the finality mechanism provides. Additionally, this move promises a simplified protocol and surrounding infrastructure for user transactions.
Despite these proposed changes, the price of Ethereum has remained stable, currently trading at $2,521.25, up 2.41% in the past 24 hours.
