Vitalik Buterin Eyes Major Shakeup to Make Ethereum Faster and Cheaper
Vitalik doesn’t point to a preferred solution, noting that all have potential positives and negatives — but he does suggest that it’s likely a hybrid approach would be used, partially implementing several solutions to achieve a balanced result
However, Buterin says there’s one significant hurdle to implementing a Tendermint-based single-slot finality solution on Ethereum: the network’s very high validator count. The Ethereum founder, however, proposes several ways around this problem:
- Brute force: Increase the number of signatures that can be processed in each slot.
- Orbit committees: A medium-sized subset of validators is randomly chosen to finalise the chain, while maintaining the network’s economic finality, similar to how Algorand works.
- Two-tiered staking: Implement two tiers of staking, one with a high deposit requirement and one with a low deposit requirement. Only the higher tier can provide economic finality.
Buterin doesn’t point to a preferred solution, noting that all have potential positives and negatives — but he does suggest that it’s likely a hybrid approach would be used, partially implementing several solutions to achieve a balanced result.
