Vitalik Buterin opens up on his vision for Ethereum and Web3 values

Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter to reveal his ten conflicting realizations and beliefs around cryptocurrencies on Monday. In the Twitter thread, Buterin outlined his vision of how Ethereum should develop and how it’s not meeting up to his expectations in reality. 

Ethereum vs. Bitcoin

Buterin first pointed out his desire to see Ethereum become more similar to Bitcoin’s system, especially in regards to its success in ‘long-term stability and stability’, he believes Ethereum will need significant ‘active short term change’ to emulate Bitcoin’s system.

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum undergoes more system changes less frequently and its community’s resistance to hard forks. For example, Ethereum is undergoing a multi-stage shift to shift its Blockchain from proof-of-work (PoW) to the less energy intensive proof-of-stake (PoS) while Bitcoin is sticking to PoW. 

Buterin also voiced his contradiction in his reducing reliance on individuals in opposition to Ethereum’s reliance on The Ethereum Foundation to manage its development and research and his appreciation of ‘live players’.

He is concerned that ‘many key apps on Ethereum already rely on far more fragile security assumptions than anything we consider acceptable in Ethereum protocol design.’, highlighting the lack of base security of Ethereum’s Blockchain. 

Moreover, he is also conflicted about the direction that ‘intellectual elites’ is taking Etherem’s decentralized ecosystem. ‘Contradiction between my desire to see Ethereum become [a layer-1 network] that can survive truly extreme circumstances and my realization that many key apps on Ethereum already rely on far more fragile security assumptions than anything we consider acceptable in Ethereum protocol design,’ he wrote to highlight his concern that Ethereum is being used in undesirable ways. 

Ethereum’s real world use cases

Buterin pointed out that he envisioned Ethereum has yet to expand to successfully apply its use cases beyond finance. He admits his indifference to modern ‘financial Blockchain applications’ like NFTs of Apes that change hands for astronomical sums. However, he concedes that these innovations have become the engine that keep the cryptocurrency market running and a huge part of the Ethereum Blockchain’s operations. 

Photo: Getty