Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke at the ETHTaipei 2024 event, which was held in Taipei from March 21 to 24.
Buterin noted that a key issue facing Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) is potential centralization. He supports the concept of “rainbow proof-of-stake”, a concept originally proposed by Barnabe Monneau at the Ethereum Foundation. This mechanism is intended to incentivize all categories of service providers, including individuals and professionals involved.
One of the main ideas of the developers was to separate the existing "operators" and "principals" and introduce tiers of "heavyweight" and "lightweight" services with different levels of responsibility and income.
In his speech, Buterin specifically mentioned a category he called “lazy pledgers.” Its representatives own 32 ether (ETH), which is the minimum threshold for staking operations. Typically, such groups use mining pools and liquid staking tools for proof. The founder of Ethereum believes that stakers can choose to conduct personal proof of equity to reduce the risk of centralization.
Buterin also noted that users have been repeatedly told not to use Lido Finance, which currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $34.3 billion, is the largest Ethereum staking platform, and controls over 30% of assets. Other major liquid proof-of-stake providers include Binance and Coinbase, both of which are major crypto exchanges.
In October 2023, Buterin proposed staking changes aimed at making Ethereum less centralized. He expressed concerns about asset allocation among Ethereum liquid proof-of-stake providers. At the time, the Lido Finance platform’s liquidity pool controlled over 70% of Ethereum’s share of proof-of-stake, although the assets were dispersed among various stakers. #VitalikButerin #rainbowstaking
