Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum , delivered a keynote speech titled "What Excites Me About the Next Decade" when attending TOKEN2049 in Singapore today (18th), saying that the cryptocurrency field has No longer in the early stages, but in the early stages of practical application of cryptocurrencies.
Vitalik Buterin first pointed out that the failure of mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency consumer payments in the past was related to factors such as high transaction fees and various other poor user experiences, but by 2024, Ethereum is ready, transaction fees have dropped significantly, and transactions The confirmation time has also been reduced to between 5 and 15 seconds on the Ethereum main network, and Layer 2 can be shortened to 1 second.
Vitalik Buterin mentioned that the user experience quality of on-chain applications has also been greatly improved. For example, the decentralized social application Firefly launched by Mask Network seems to be no different from the quality of Web2 products, but Firefly is based on decentralized applications:
This year we also saw progress in account abstraction. We see more and more people using security tools, we see EIP-7702 emerge, we begin to see ZK-snarks become mainstream, various different applications are born, and we have new and better privacy protocols.
Ethereum’s future goal is to meet mainstream adoption
In Vitalik Buterin's view, technical limitations have been a hindrance in the past, but this is no longer the case. However, this does not mean that the reasons for not using cryptocurrency no longer exist, and the main goal of Ethereum in the next 10 years should be is to meet the needs of mainstream adoption while maintaining the values of open source and decentralization.
Taking ensuring the safety of funds as an example, Vitalik Buterin pointed out that in the past, there were two ways to keep one's own cryptocurrency. One was extreme self-sovereignty, such as writing down a seed phrase, and all operations were performed offline, and the other was Relying on a trusted third party, such as an exchange, has its flaws, leading to increased risk.
The future solution, Vitalik Buterin believes, is a multi-signature smart wallet, which allows transactions to be managed through multiple private keys. For example, there may be 6 private keys, but when sending a transaction, 4 private keys are required to jointly execute a digital signature before the transaction can be sent. It not only protects user funds, but also provides convenience:
Users can set up an Ethereum account, a smart contract wallet, and can only send transactions if you generate a proof that you control a specific email address... I personally trust my multi-signature wallet more than any one centralized account.
Vitalik Buterin emphasized that this is a way that allows ordinary users to have a high degree of privacy, while meeting many important compliance requirements, but there is no backdoor, and you can have privacy and trust at the same time:
On the Ethereum mainnet, many technical improvements are taking place, making Layer 1 more decentralized and easier to verify while reducing final confirmation time and scaling. These things are already happening. This is where I think the Ethereum ecosystem, and cryptocurrencies as a whole, are going to go over the next decade.
