Author:André Beganski
Compiled by: Bai Hua Blockchain
It turns out that Vitalik Buterin is not entirely satisfied with the first major overhaul of Ethereum's consensus mechanism, despite years of technical refinement and discussion.
In a blog post on Monday, the Ethereum co-founder proposed several potential improvements to Ethereum's proof-of-stake model. These include lowering the capital threshold for individual stakers, and shortening the time it takes for Ethereum blocks to be confirmed.
Two years ago, the "Merge" event fundamentally changed the way Ethereum transactions are verified. Ethereum no longer relies on an energy-intensive computer network to ensure its security, but instead has shifted to a system where validators stake assets in the network.
Validators are rewarded for packaging transaction blocks and verifying the accuracy of other blocks. To participate in this process, validators need to stake 32 ETH (about $84,000) as a "participation guarantee". However, Buterin believes this threshold can be significantly lowered to 1 ETH (about $2,600).
"Polls have repeatedly shown that the main factor preventing more people from staking independently is the 32 ETH minimum threshold," he wrote. "Lowering this to 1 ETH will solve this problem, at which point other issues will become the main limiting factor for independent staking."
The growth rate of Ethereum network validators has slowed down recently. According to beaconchai.in data, while the number of active validators exceeded 1 million in April, only about 73,000 new validators have joined since then. In the past month, this number has increased by less than 3,000.
Reducing the staking requirement for Ethereum validators could also alleviate some concerns about network centralization. Currently, the leading decentralized ETH liquid staking platform Lido Finance accounts for 28% of all Ethereum staked, according to Dune dashboard data.
The second part of Buterin's improvement proposals mainly focuses on the issue of transaction finality. This term refers to Ethereum transactions that are included in a block and cannot be altered once confirmed.
Buterin wrote that as of now, Ethereum transactions take about 15 minutes to be finalized. This is because Ethereum's progress is measured in "epochs", with each epoch occurring approximately every 6.4 minutes. Each epoch consists of 32 "slots", with a new block typically generated every 12 seconds.
Chris Meisl, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Blocknative, explained that after two epochs have passed, it becomes economically infeasible for an attacker to roll back Ethereum blocks. At this point, he wrote in a blog post last year, you can consider it "extremely secure".
Buterin also mentioned that "single-slot confirmation" would reduce the finality time to 12 seconds. Combined with the lower staking requirement, this would make "Ethereum's properties more in line with those of (more centralized) Layer1 blockchains focused on performance".
However, Buterin also acknowledged that there are multiple different ways to implement "single-slot confirmation", including using powerful cryptographic methods or a two-tier system designed for stakers.
Buterin's blog post comes at a time when discussions around Layer2 networks are intensifying. While Ethereum's Dencun upgrade in March introduced a new way to help users reduce transaction costs, it also led to a period of inflation in Ethereum's circulating supply.
Meanwhile, Ethereum core developers are preparing for the next major upgrade - Pectra. The first part of this upgrade is expected to be released in early 2024 and will adjust the way Ethereum stakers receive rewards.
