According to BlockBeats, Ethereum core developer Péter Szilágyi recently expressed concerns about the direction of Ethereum's development, particularly regarding the upcoming PeerDAS upgrade. Szilágyi highlighted that the proposed changes, such as increasing blob data size to 32MB, would require high network bandwidth, potentially reaching 2.5Gbit/s. This could hinder home nodes with simpler computing equipment from participating in the Ethereum network, contradicting the decentralized ethos of blockchain technology. Szilágyi stated, 'This is actually killing home stakers, which is not what I signed up for when I joined Ethereum.' His criticism sparked significant attention and debate within the Ethereum community about the core principles of the network.
In response, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed Szilágyi's concerns through a series of tweets on the 27th, firmly denying any intention to centralize the Ethereum network. Buterin emphasized that the Ethereum team has been deeply involved in discussions aimed at minimizing centralization rather than promoting it. He outlined several key initiatives and discussions within the Ethereum research community to ensure the network remains decentralized. These include exploring multi-proposer systems to distribute proposal power more evenly, discussing the elimination of the builder role to reduce central control points, and optimizing fork choice to enhance the decentralization of the block validation process.
Buterin also mentioned the research on accelerating the deployment of the Orbit mechanism, which aims to significantly reduce the minimum deposit size for validators and achieve single-slot finality. This innovation could greatly improve Ethereum's efficiency and reduce centralization risks. Additionally, the Ethereum team is exploring distributed block construction technology for PeerDAS to more broadly distribute block construction control. Efforts are also being made to optimize the network and bandwidth requirements for PeerDAS and fullDAS, ensuring the network can scale without centralized control. The team is researching partially automated recovery from 51% attacks to maintain network resilience without centralized oversight and ensuring inclusion lists apply to blobs and native account abstraction transactions, as proposed in EIP-7560, to maintain transparency and decentralization.
One of Buterin's key rebuttals focused on the concept of single-slot finality (SSF). Currently, Ethereum blocks take about 15 minutes to finalize, but SSF could propose and finalize blocks within the same slot, significantly reducing finalization time and improving overall network efficiency. While SSF is still in the research phase, its successful implementation could propel Ethereum forward by minimizing any single entity's control over block finalization, ensuring faster transactions and reducing centralization risks.
