On September 1, Vitalik Buterin conducted an interview with the economics author Noah Smith and the co-founder of Ethereum spoke an awful lot about Bitcoin and the network’s long-term security. Buterin also discussed the crypto economy’s crash and said he was “surprised that the crash did not happen earlier.”
Buterin: Bitcoin Is ‘Not Succeeding at Getting the Level of Fee Revenue Required to Secure What Could Be a Multi-Trillion-Dollar System’
Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently did an interview with the economics author Noah Smith and Buterin had a lot to say about the current state of crypto. Smith 1st asked Buterin about his thoughts about the recent crypto crash and Buterin said he thought that it might have crashed sooner.
“I was stunned that the crash failed to happen earlier,” Buterin said during the interview. “Normally crypto bubbles last around 6-9 months when surpassing the previous prime, when that the speedy drop comes pretty quickly. This time, the bull market lasted nearly one and a half years,” the developer additional.
Buterin additionally talked an excellent deal concerning the Bitcoin (BTC) network and therefore the Merge, Ethereum’s extremely anticipated transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). He claims Bitcoin isn't cutting it once it comes to fee revenue from block subsidies.
“In the long term, Bitcoin security goes to come entirely from fees, and Bitcoin long term not succeeding at obtaining the extent of fee revenue needed to secure what may be a multi-trillion-dollar system,” Buterin said.
When Smith asked Buterin concerning Bitcoin’s energy usage, the Ethereum co-founder noted that PoS won't solely scale back hurt to the atmosphere, it’s also about keeping the blockchain secure.
“A consensus system that needlessly costs vast amounts of electricity isn't simply unhealthy for the environment, it also needs supplying many thousands of BTC or ETH once a year,” Buterin stressed. “Eventually, of course, the issue can decrease to near-zero, at that point that may stop being a difficulty, then again Bitcoin can begin to deal with another issue: how to make sure that it stays secure.” Buterin added:
And these security motivations are also a really important driver behind Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake
Buterin understands that Bitcoin won’t change its consensus mechanism, a minimum of for presently, but if the chain was attacked, he believes the discussion of a hybrid PoS rule might inherit play.
“Of course, if Bitcoin really gets attacked, I do expect that the political will to modify to a minimum of hybrid proof of stake will quickly appear, but I expect that to be a painful transition,” the code developer told Smith. The Ethereum co-founder same that he thinks folks have the inaccurate set up relating to PoS giving the foremost necessary stakeholders management over the network.
“There are also people who attempt to claim that PoS permits large stakeholders to regulate the protocol, but i think those arguments are merely plain wrong,” Buterin same. “They rest on a concept captive and PoS area unit governance mechanisms, once in purpose of truth they are consensus mechanisms. All they're doing is help the network agree on the correct chain.”
Buterin continued by noting that he thinks the first version of captive was a decent begin line but these days he believes it’s antiquated, on its resolution the door, and sure won’t return.
The highly democratized early proof-of-work era was a beautiful thing, and it helped tremendously in making cryptocurrency ownership more egalitarian, but it’s unsustainable and it’s not coming back.
(Jamie Redman, Bitcoin.com, 2022 )