Vitalik posted to discuss how proof-of-stake technology can be improved, aiming to enable validators to stake with 1 ETH

ChainCatcher news, Vitalik published a long article on Warpcast titled "Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge," in which he emphasized the exploration of "what improvements can be made to the technical design of proof of stake, and what are the pathways to achieve this goal?"

Vitalik stated that the three goals of Ethereum staking are to maximize the number of validators that can participate in staking (which directly means minimizing the minimum ETH required for staking); to minimize the time for finality; and to minimize the overhead of running a node. Ideally, he hopes to maintain economic finality while improving the status quo in two areas: completing blocks within a time slot (ideally, maintaining or even reducing the current length of 12 seconds), rather than 15 minutes; and allowing validators to stake with 1 ETH (below the 32 ETH requirement).