This article comes fromTNW, original author: Matthew Beedham

Odaily Translator |

Odaily Translator |

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, recently discussed with the community on the well-known forum Reddit some difficulties faced by the current network from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).

According to Vitalik Buterin, the current implementation of proof-of-stake switching in the Ethereum blockchain is not smooth sailing, but there are four main obstacles, which can be summarized as follows:

1. The verification transaction participation rate is lower than expected;

2. Equity pools have become too popular;

3. From a technical point of view, Sharding is more complicated than expected;

4. The cost of running a node is more expensive than expected, which is also the main reason for the first and second problems.

Vitalik Buterin's greatest concern remains ensuring the decentralization of the Ethereum blockchain and lowering the entry barrier for network validators so that the cost of running a node does not become very expensive.

In a recent interview, Vitalik Buterin put it this way:

"When many proof-of-stake systems are designed, they often think that the system will only have dozens or hundreds of nodes. However, when I design some protocols of Ethereum, I have my own views and opinions."

Vitalik Buterin seems somewhat concerned that validators are refusing to accept Proof of Stake, which, if true, could lead to a reduction in the number of Ethereum nodes. While most proof-of-stake systems don't use many nodes, Vitalik Buterin still hopes that if the community needs nodes, they can be set up without too much cost. On the other hand, a small number of nodes can also lead to "centralization" problems, and the cost of running a node can become unworthy if it is too high.

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A Brief Review of Ethereum and Proof of Stake

Ethereum is exploring a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm to deal with growing scaling issues and to help its blockchain platform provide faster "block times" -- the time it takes to generate a block .

However, Proof-of-Stake isn’t the only solution Vitalik Buterin is exploring. He hinted in February that Ethereum hopes to be a “sharding” protocol, which is also an attempt to solve Ethereum’s scaling problems.

In preparation for these protocol updates, Ethereum recently implemented two software forks — Constantinople and St. Petersburg. Although there are many delays in solving Ethereum security issues, it is undeniable that these two hard fork updates have laid a technical foundation for the implementation of Ethereum expansion projects in the future.

Through these two hard forks, the Ethereum block reward was reduced from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block, while several updates were made to network maintenance and optimization to improve blockchain efficiency.

In fact, Vitalik Buterin has been keenly aware that the Ethereum blockchain needs to continue to be developed and expanded, but the community has had a lot of controversy over the expansion strategy. In addition to changing from workload proof to equity proof, Ethereum is still Explore another strategy to solve the scaling problem - use the Programmatic Proof-of-Work algorithm, which is more like a hybrid of the workload proof algorithm and the stake proof algorithm.

Programmatic Proof-of-Work aims to reduce the mining advantage of ASIC miners and allow Ethereum mining rigs to use more readily available GPU chips. Theoretically, this algorithm can reduce the manufacturing volume and resource waste of ASIC mining machines. Of course, there are also those who argue that in principle the Ethereum blockchain should ensure that the cost of starting and running a node is lower than the cost of using a dedicated mining machine (such as an ASIC mining machine).

Vitalik Buterin seems to support the boycott of ASIC mining machines, because he believes that this can reduce the cost of miners entering the network, and it also means that it will bring more "decentralization" and make Ethereum more decentralized , is a good thing. However, Vitalik Buterin finally reiterated that proof of stake may cause Ethereum to fall into a centralization problem. He said:

“Those proof-of-stake systems can indeed make the network faster and get shorter block times, but on the other hand, they may also cause the network to fall into a centralization problem.”