- Blockchain must keep minimalism
- And the technical tasks will be taken over by ZK-SNARKs
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has published a new note on his blog. It’s called Don’t Overload the Ethereum Consensus:
Actually, the essence of the message is clear from the title. Buterin warned that using the Ethereum network consensus for other purposes could lead to high systemic risks for the ecosystem. Therefore, it is important to keep the network minimalism.
Buterin noted that recently, participants have been actively promoting ideas to use the Ethereum social consensus for new purposes. For example, for the operation of oracles or re-staking. This is not surprising since the blockchain core has the largest economic weight and community.
However, building up these threatens “high systemic risks” for the ecosystem. For example, a deliberate 51% attack (when control of most of the blocks passes into the hands of malicious individuals).
In general, according to Buterin, any expansion of the Ethereum consensus functionality increases the risks, costs and complexity of the validator.
“Instead, we should keep the web minimal and help developers find alternative strategies to achieve their security goals.”
The other day, Buterin said in his speech that “zK-SNARKs will be as important as blockchains in the next 10 years.”
In fact, this is the answer, which technology to use as an alternative.