Vitalik Buterin Reveals Three Transitions Needed For Ethereum Success

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined three primary transitions that must be in place to ensure Ethereum’s success.

Buterin noted that Ethereum must improve its layer-2 scalability, privacy-preserving features, and wallet security to secure a successful future. He stressed that these infrastructures must work almost simultaneously for the blockchain to succeed.

The Three Key Transitions Explained

Vitalik Buterin explained that Ethereum would fail without sufficient scaling infrastructure to reduce transaction costs.

In the said the Ethereum co-founder’s words, “Without the first, Ethereum fails because each transaction costs $3.75 ($82.48 if we have another bull run), and every product aiming for mass market inevitably forgets about the chain and adopts centralized workarounds for everything.”

In addition, he noted that another point of failure lies with Smart Contract issues. The Ethereum co-founder explained that migration to smart contract wallets causes issues due to user experience-related complexities, which often arise when users control multiple addresses at once. Furthermore, Buterin explained that wallets must secure data to “truly transition” into an on-chain world with zero-knowledge rollups.

Regarding that, Buterin said, In a ZK world, however, this is no longer true: the wallet is not just protecting authentication credentials, it’s also holding your data.

Another thing Buterin mentioned is that privacy transition should come as improved identity, reputation, and social recovery systems. He noted that Ethereum would fail without privacy because having all transactions publicly for everyone to see is too risky for users.

More so, if transactions become accessible to the public, users would resort to centralized platforms that at least hide their data. So, the Ethereum co-founder suggested private (stealth) addresses implementation to resolve such issues.

Ethereum Must Prioritize User Experience To Succeed

While this sound promising, Buterin noted that achieving all three transitions would not be easy because they require intense coordination between each. He acknowledged that each transition feature incapacitates the one-user-one-address model, which may complicate how smart contracts execute transactions.

One of the key challenges here would be extracting payment information, as users may find it difficult to access settlement information.

Also, users with several assets stored in different places across multiple chains may face complications with social recovery and private key changes. Therefore, the Ethereum co-founder emphasized the need to develop an infrastructure that prioritizes and improves user experience.

Despite the challenges, achieving scalability, wallet security, and privacy for regular users is crucial for Ethereum’s future. It is not just about technical feasibility but about actual accessibility for regular users. We need to rise to meet this challenge, he concluded.

He noted that keeping things decentralized and simple for users to understand is paramount for Ethereum’s success as a blockchain.