Vitalik's Vision: A Simplified Breakdown of Ethereum's Future and The Merge

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The scaling of Ethereum L1 has been a hot debate of late in the Ethereum community. Recently, on October 13th, Vitalik Buterin published a piece called: Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge. His post outlines proposed improvements to Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (POS) system, focusing on making it faster, more accessible, and more secure. It highlights ongoing efforts to reduce the time it takes to finalize transactions, make staking more affordable for individuals, and improve overall security.

We’ve summarized the main ideas of Vitalik’s post below:

1. Faster Transaction Finality and Easier Staking:

Right now, it takes around 15 minutes for an Ethereum transaction to be fully confirmed (or “finalized”), and becoming a validator requires a minimum of 32 ETH (a significant amount). The goal is to reduce this finalization time to about 12 seconds, so transactions are confirmed almost immediately. Another goal is to lower the staking requirement to 1 ETH, which would allow more people to participate in securing the network on their own.

These changes would make Ethereum more user-friendly: transactions would feel nearly instant, and more people could become validators without needing a large investment. However, making these improvements while keeping the network secure is a challenge. Validators play a key role in keeping the network secure, and they all need to work together to finalize transactions quickly and safely.

2. Proposals for Single-Slot Finality (SSF):

Several ideas are being explored to achieve faster finalization and more accessible staking:

• Brute-Force SSF: This approach focuses on improving technology to allow Ethereum to process millions of validator approvals quickly. Advanced cryptographic methods (like “Horn”) would make this possible.

• Orbit Committees: This idea involves randomly selecting smaller groups of validators to finalize each transaction, which would reduce the workload without compromising security.

• Two-Tiered Staking: Validators would be divided into two groups—those with larger stakes (who ensure finality) and those with smaller stakes (who play a supporting role). This could reduce centralization risks while maintaining security.

Each option comes with trade-offs between complexity, security, and decentralization.

3. Improving Validator Security:

Currently, it’s possible to know which validator will create the next block, making them vulnerable to targeted attacks. A proposal called Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) would hide the identity of the next validator until they create the block, improving security by preventing such attacks.

4. Faster Transaction Confirmations:

Ethereum is looking to reduce transaction times from 12 seconds to as little as 4 seconds. This would significantly improve user experience, making decentralized applications and financial protocols more responsive. However, there’s a risk that reducing transaction times could lead to centralization, as validators in regions with slower internet might struggle to keep up.

5. Other Future Concerns:

• 51% Attack Recovery: If someone gained control of 51% of validators and attacked the network, there are ideas to automate how the network recovers, instead of relying solely on community action.

• Quantum-Resistance: With quantum computers potentially being able to break today’s cryptography in the future, Ethereum is exploring ways to upgrade its security to withstand such threats.

In summary, Ethereum is working on making its POS system faster, more secure, and accessible to more people, while still preserving the decentralization that makes the network resilient.

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