Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum is in a “long and complicated transition phase”

Vitalik Buterin expanded on Ethereum’s future plans at the EthCC conference in Paris today.

Vitalik Buterin said that Ethereum is facing “short-term pain, long-term gain” as it prepares for the merge and other major changes.

Buterin talks about the future of Ethereum

Speaking to a packed main room at the EthCC conference in Paris on Thursday, Vitalik Buterin explained how Ethereum is undergoing several important changes that will ultimately improve the system in the long run. Vitalik Buterin opened his 40-minute presentation by talking about the “long and complicated transition” of Ethereum, but added that the network was on its way to becoming “a more robust and powerful system“.

Vitalik Buterin broke down Ethereum’s upcoming changes into four phases that he first discussed on Bankless earlier this year: the Merge, the Surge, the Verge, and the Purge (the merge, the surge, the verge, and the purge). The Merge refers to the transition of the network from the Proof-of-Stake, which is expected to be delivered around September 19. The Surge refers to the addition of 64 shard chains, which should reduce congestion on the main chain by distributing traffic. The Verge refers to the addition of clients to make the network more decentralized, and The Purge involves the removal of historical data in an effort to streamline the network.

Regarding the Proof-of-Stake upgrade, also known as EIP-3675, Vitalik Buterin said that Ethereum would be about “55% complete” after the merger. Another major protocol upgrade Buterin highlighted was EIP-4444, a proposal focused on storing historical data in runtime clients. “Because people value scalability, you can’t rely on nodes to store everything ” he said, before citing The Graph, BitTorrent and block browsers as potential sources of data storage in the future. Buterin also mentioned EIP-1559, the fee burning model that was introduced in August 2021 to make gas fees more predictable. “EIP-1559 has been incredible. It changed a lot of things, but it changed the way we think about transactions” he said.

Once the various changes are implemented, Buterin said, Ethereum will potentially be able to process 100,000 transactions per second (instead of the 15 or so it handles today), while Layer 2 rollups could become three times cheaper as the network becomes more scalable.

Short-term pain, long-term gain

While Vitalik Buterin spoke at length about these changes, he added a caveat. “There is a lot going on, but that does not mean we should go this way forever“, he said, noting that he thought Ethereum would need “calm down” in the future.

“Ethereum’s capabilities are getting more and more powerful“, he said. “But the pace of change will have to slow down“.

Vitalik Buterin stated that the network should maximize security and predictability and referred to what he called “the escape velocity thesis“, claiming that the Ethereum of the future could become sufficiently developed to no longer require major redesigns. “It’s similar to Turing’s completeness… if you have a powerful enough computer, you can build almost anything on it.“

Summarizing the future of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin said he expects the network to face “short-term pain, long-term gain” as he prepares for the Meltdown, the Surge, the Verge and the Purge. “There is this pain that happens once, but basically future generations will be very grateful“, he said.

The fifth edition of EthCC is taking place this week in Paris. The three-day event featured a variety of speakers from projects within the Ethereum ecosystem, including Lens Protocol, Polygon, Optimism and UMA.