Vitalik Buterin
Compiled by PANews (Wu said that the original text has been adjusted)
Original link:
https://www.panewslab.com/zh/articledetails/tjxfwbpy.html
On October 17, the "10th Blockchain Global Summit" hosted by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab was officially held. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a speech at the meeting, reviewing the development of Ethereum and looking forward to the future. He said that Ethereum will achieve a transaction processing capacity of more than 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) through Layer 2 (L2) technology in the future, and at the same time, the transfer from any chain on Ethereum to other chains can be completed within 2 seconds, and the user experience will be more unified. In addition, he also pointed out that the Ethereum infrastructure is expanding, and the security of cross-chain is more important than EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine).
The following is the full text of the speech:
Good morning everyone!
The Ethereum project started in November 2013, the Ethereum Foundation was founded in 2014, and the mainnet was launched in July 2015. Looking back over the past decade, our main goal has always been to improve the technology of Ethereum. If you have listened to my speeches in 2015, 2016, or 2017, you may find that what I talked about then is not much different from what I am talking about now. In 2022, we completed the full transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). At that time, I also talked about scalability, privacy, zero-knowledge proof technology, and security issues. These are what we have been doing over the past decade, and now we have made great progress in these areas.
How to measure this progress?
The first is transaction fees. Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) technology has reduced transaction fees. You may remember that in 2020 and 2021, there was no L2, and the Layer 1 transaction fees were very high, usually between $5 and $10, and the highest fee I personally paid was $800. In 2022 and 2023, L2 began to appear, and the transaction fees were significantly cheaper than Layer 1, but still not cheap enough.
In March of this year, we proposed EIP-4844, an important concept that aims to provide more data space for Layer 2, enabling transactions to be processed at a lower cost. Through this mechanism, transaction fees have dropped significantly, from $0.2 to $0.01. This significant reduction in fees is critical for many application scenarios. Both developers and users benefit from this, especially when fees are extremely low, developers can even bear these costs for users. This makes Ethereum's success in social applications possible.
The second improvement is the speed of transaction confirmation.
When you send a transaction, how long does it take to be confirmed? The average block time of Bitcoin is 10 minutes, and sometimes it may take 30 minutes or even longer. Ethereum's initial block time was 17 seconds, which was later adjusted to 4 seconds, and then 12 seconds. Although the block speed has increased, the design of the Gas fee still has efficiency issues. When the fee is low, the transaction may wait longer, perhaps 5 minutes or even 30 minutes.
EIP-1559, introduced in 2021, solves this problem. Now, in 90% of cases, transactions are confirmed quickly after being sent, and the remaining 10% only need to wait a little while. These improvements have greatly improved the efficiency of Layer 2. In 2023 and 2024, our goal is to further reduce transaction costs and speed up confirmation. By allowing Layer 2 nodes to quickly feedback transaction confirmation information, users can know whether the transaction is successful in almost 0.5 to 1 second.
The third important development is the improvement of user experience.
Ethereum interfaces in 2015 were crude, such as EtherTweet, while today's applications, such as Firefly (which combines Farcaster, Twitter, and Lens), are significantly improved in quality. This demonstrates the huge progress we have made in the user interface and experience. It is worth noting that in some countries, such as Argentina and Turkey, more than 10% of the population holds digital currencies, but most people use these digital currencies through centralized services because centralized exchanges provide free and fast transfers The service, user interface is also very well done. If we want these users to switch to blockchain and take full advantage of its trustless features, the user experience of decentralized applications must be improved.
Smart accounts and account abstraction technologies are also constantly improving. For example, Safe is a well-known multi-signature wallet that is widely used, and ZKEmail is a mailbox application based on zero-knowledge proof, which allows users to manage and verify account information through Ethereum smart contracts. These technologies have greatly improved user security and privacy.
The progress of zero-knowledge proof is also exciting. Since 2015, zero-knowledge proof technology has been talked about, and now it has become part of practical applications. Early Zcash transactions may take 90 seconds or more, but now the process only takes 1 second on a mobile phone. Identity applications based on zero-knowledge proofs such as Zupass and applications such as Rarimo for verifying passport information are providing possibilities for various applications.
We have also seen a significant improvement in the user experience of wallets. Over the past few years, blockchain technology has continued to advance, allowing us to develop applications for mainstream users, which was unimaginable five years ago.
Future challenges and directions
Despite all the progress we have made, Ethereum still faces some important challenges. The Ethereum ecosystem is now like a 30-year-old, maturing. We need a unified ecosystem to make cross-chain transfers simpler and safer. Currently, users need to go to specific websites to perform complex operations, and errors may occur if they are not careful. The introduction of the ERC-7683 protocol can help simplify the cross-chain transfer process. Combined with this protocol, sending assets will become more convenient.
Light clients are also an important development. Currently, most users interact with the blockchain through RPC nodes, which are centralized and trust-based. Helios is an L1 light client project. If we combine it with the Ethereum and Layer 2 frameworks, we can achieve a more decentralized light client solution.
Zero-knowledge proof technology has gone from theory to practice in the past five years, and now there are many on-chain and off-chain applications. Gas fees are still a problem for non-financial applications, because non-financial applications have large and frequent transactions, while financial applications mainly focus on payments. Blockchain may not be able to handle all non-financial application needs, but it can be combined with off-chain parts to achieve better results.
Looking to the future of Ethereum
We have several important goals:
1. Achieve transaction processing capabilities of over 100,000 TPS through L2.
2. Realize cross-chain transfers from any chain on Ethereum to other chains within 2 seconds.
3. Provide a unified user experience.
4. Ensure cross-chain security takes precedence over EVM.
Ethereum technology is expanding, and EVM is still important, but secure cross-chain will be the key direction for future development. In the future, we will have many technologies to try. If you have had some ideas but failed to implement them, now may be a good time to try again. New technologies bring us possibilities that were previously unimaginable.
