Blog

Vitalik's latest blog post elaborates on his views regarding technological optimism, AI risks, blockchain, and cryptography

ChainCatcher news, Vitalik Buterin elaborated on his views regarding the recent debates surrounding techno-optimism, AI risks, and avoiding extreme centralization methods in the 21st century, as well as blockchain and cryptography, in his latest blog post "My techno-optimism."In it, Vitalik stated that artificial intelligence is fundamentally different from other technologies and deserves special caution. In Ethereum, they intentionally try to ensure that many parts of the stack are decentralized: ensuring that no single codebase controls more than half of the proof-of-stake network, attempting to resist the dominance of large staking pools, improving geographical distribution, etc. Essentially, Ethereum is trying to realize an ancient liberal dream of a market-based society. To some extent, this is effective: the dominance of the Prysm client has dropped from over 70% to below 45%. But this is not an automatic market process: it is the result of human will and coordinated action.Blockchain enables the creation of economic and social structures with a "shared hard drive" without relying on centralized actors. Cryptocurrencies allow individuals to store funds and conduct financial transactions, much like using cash before the internet, without relying on trusted third parties that may arbitrarily change the rules. They can also serve as a backup anti-counterfeiting mechanism, making attacks and spam costly for users who do not have or do not wish to reveal their true identities.Account abstraction, especially social recovery wallets, can protect our crypto assets and potentially protect other types of assets in the future, without overly relying on centralized intermediaries. Zero-knowledge proofs can be used for privacy protection, allowing users to prove things about themselves without revealing private information. For example, encapsulating a digital passport signature in a ZK-SNARK to prove that you are a unique citizen of a certain country without disclosing which specific citizen you are. Technologies like this can allow us to maintain the benefits of privacy and anonymity while still obtaining security assurances and combating spam and bad actors.
2023-11-28

Vitalik's blog post: Changes in protocols and staking pools can improve decentralization and reduce consensus overhead

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a blog post stating that the current state of Ethereum can be described as encompassing a significant portion of emerging double-layer staking. There are two types of participants in double-layer staking: node operators and delegators.However, these two types of staking have two main drawbacks: the centralization risk of node operators and the lack of consensus layer burden. Vitalik believes that these issues can be addressed by expanding representative choice and increasing consensus participation. If done well, adjusting the staking design can solve the problems:Provide opportunities for those who do not have the resources or capability to stake individually today, thereby empowering them.Reduce the number of signatures that the Ethereum consensus layer needs to handle in each time slot to a smaller number, such as around 10,000.For solutions like this, there are different layers of abstraction, and solutions to the problems can exist within these layers of abstraction: the powers granted to users in staking pool protocols, user choices between staking pool protocols, and regulations within the protocols. This choice should be carefully considered to minimize feasible regulations, reduce the complexity of the protocols and the degree of change in protocol economics, while still achieving the intended goals, which is often the best approach.
ChainCatcher Building the Web3 world with innovators