Buterin believes that building a more decentralized ecosystem will require short-term pain in exchange for long-term gains.
Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum) shared his long-term vision live at the annual Ethereum Conference in Paris. According to Buterin, Ethereum is at an inflection point. This means that the ecosystem’s capabilities are currently under rapid change.
The primary goal of Ethereum at the moment is to create an easy-to use client for the execution layer, consensus layer and layer-2 layers. Next, better support for home-stakers and those who want to validate transactions on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake network. Buterin also believes that Ethereum should eventually be able to run on a fully functioning node using lighter hardware.
Buterin intends to upgrade Ethereum with more cryptographic technology, possibly for quantum resistance, if and when they are available, and also further integrate with zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zk-EVMs), should they succeed. Buterin says that it is important to remain open-minded. “We don’t know what 2032 will require.”
The Ethereum co-founder shared his doubts about a few potential opportunities. These include adding support for multiple, complex virtual machines, getting too comfortable with Black box technologies like zk-SNARKs, or making the protocol difficult to understand without specialists. The “Merge” proof-of-stake conversion is nearing Ethereum. Despite the fact that it has been over two years in development, some developers remain skeptical as to whether there will be an easy transition.
