Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a post on the social media platform X addressing discussions surrounding Ethereum’s shift from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus system.
X users observed that many members of the Ethereum community expressed a preference for the network to remain with a PoW consensus mechanism instead of transitioning to PoS.
However, Vitalik Buterin countered this sentiment, stating that PoW also had significant centralization issues, albeit less discussed, as it was considered a temporary stage before transitioning to PoS. “And that doesn’t even get into how we probably mostly avoided ASICs only because the upcoming PoS switch meant no incentive to build them,” said Vitalik Buterin.
He then shared a pie chart depicting Ethereum PoW mining pools. The chart indicated that SparkPool, now closed, held the largest share at 33%, followed by Ethermine at 21% and F2Pool at 11%. Other pools included Nanopool with 8% and zhzhu.top with 4%, among others, making up the remaining 23%.
PoW was also quite centralized. It was just not talked about as much, because everyone knew it was only a temporary stage until PoS.And that doesn't even get into how we probably mostly avoided ASICs only because the upcoming PoS switch meant no incentive to build them. pic.twitter.com/OhaqmRiiGJ
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 26, 2024
PoW ensures the security of a decentralized ledger by tasking miners with solving intricate, energy-demanding mathematical problems to authenticate nodes and add blocks to the network. On the other hand, a PoS system relies on tokens staked to validator nodes to validate transactions.
Vitalik Buterin’s Roadmap For Network Enhancement
Ethereum underwent a transition to a PoS consensus system, a process referred to as The Merge in September 2022. This transition notably reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.5%.
In the same year, Vitalik Buterin put forward a development roadmap aimed at improving the network‘s capabilities and features. This roadmap is divided into five primary categories of upgrades, namely the Surge, the Scourge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge, along with the aforementioned Merge.
However, the Ethereum Foundation opts to designate the distinct technological advancements outlined within the upgrade categories as separate elements. These upgrades include features such as danksharding, proposer-builder separation, verkle trees, and account abstraction, each treated as individual components.
After the upgrades, Ethereum is anticipated to introduce the concept of stateless validation, reduce data load for validators, and facilitate proposer-builder separation, among other numerous enhancements.
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