Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin addresses the main concerns of the Ethereum community
Dan Burgin
Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on decentralization and the future of ETH
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Vitalik Buterin has published a new article describing upcoming improvements to Ethereum, particularly focusing on PeerDAS, the Verkle Tree transition, and decentralized methods of storing history as proposed in EIP-4444.
The Ethereum founder highlighted the importance of decentralization, a key part of ETH’s unique development strategy. He also addressed issues such as maximum extractable value (MEV) and the balance between its minimization and quarantine.
The article was inspired by a series of tweets from longtime Geth lead developer Peter Szilagyi, who expressed his concerns regarding MEV.
Buterin noted that many of these concerns are already addressed by elements of the current protocol and that additional issues can be addressed through realistic adjustments to the current roadmap.
MEV
Buterin discussed Ethereum’s approach to managing miner extractable value (MEV), which emerged around 2020 when miners began using complex strategies to earn additional income through DeFi activities. This development has compromised the fairness of block proposals, favoring larger players.
Two strategies treat VPD: minimization and quarantine. Minimizing MEV involves creating alternatives like Cowswap and using encrypted memory pools to reduce exploitable information.
MEV quarantining accepts MEV but limits its impact by separating the block proposal from the content selection. Validators focus on proposing blocks, while specialist builders choose block content via an auction protocol.
Buterin supports a mix of the two strategies, recognizing that MEV will not disappear completely and emphasizing the need to reduce potential damage caused by builders to maintain decentralization.
Decentralization
Buterin also highlighted the importance of making Ethereum nodes accessible, a central issue in the decentralization of the blockchain. He highlighted that EIP-4444 and Verkle trees are key technologies for reducing node hardware requirements, potentially to less than 100 gigabytes, or even almost zero, by offloading history storage.
Source: Vitalik.eth.limo
Buterin acknowledged concerns about centralization if responsibility for maintaining state and evidence were offloaded, suggesting an alternative: storing old history in a peer-to-peer network where each node holds a small portion of the data . This would ensure robustness with thousands of copies and potentially use erasure coding for increased reliability.
He emphasized that while Ethereum Layer 1 should support Layer 2 projects, it must maintain the scalability and unique properties that distinguish Ethereum, ensuring continued decentralization and security.
About the Author
Dan Burgin
Dan is an editor and writer with 12 years of experience in finance and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on crypto. Covering a wide range of topics, from fintech startups to AI, it provides an in-depth look at the current state of the crypto market, as well as insight into its potential for future disruption.