Author: Jack Inabinet, Source: Bankless, Translated by: Shaw, Golden Finance
Ethereum has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin guest-starred on the Bankless podcast hosted by Ryan and David, reflecting on the development of Ethereum over the past decade and discussing the future direction of the network.
This nearly two-hour interview is rich in content, filled with bold predictions, candid reflections, and philosophical insights.
ETH has practical value
Although Vitalik is not always eager to discuss ETH prices, Ryan and David seem pleased to hear Vitalik respond to questions about the value of ETH in the summary of this conversation.
For many cryptocurrency observers, the price of ETH is the glue that tightly binds the entire Ethereum ecosystem together. In the interview, Vitalik seemed to acknowledge this and expressed his pleasure in seeing the Ethereum community unite around ETH, prioritizing ETH as the economic center of Ethereum.
Similarly, when asked about the Ethereum treasury reserve company, Vitalik stated that they provide individuals with various ways to gain exposure to ETH investments and added that coordinating around holding ETH on its balance sheet as part of its treasury is 'beneficial and valuable.'
Privacy: The next frontier for Ethereum
Decentralization was Ethereum's first major attempt, and privacy is likely to be its next goal. Vitalik dedicated a significant amount of time in this episode to outlining an ambitious and principled yet practical privacy roadmap.
From default privacy wallets to scalable non-custodial privacy pools, Vitalik clearly states that zero-knowledge cryptographic technology is key to achieving full privacy for Ethereum and realizing its cypherpunk ideals.
In his vision, privacy is a freedom that should not be limited to purists or pirates; it must be built for the public. To achieve this, Ethereum must adopt a model similar to 'Bronze Age Sea Bass,' where the front-end has the atmosphere and the back-end has the policies, thus achieving scalable privacy protection on both technical and cultural levels.
Ethereum's L2 Barbell strategy is working
Despite ongoing concerns about the fragmentation of L2 networks in 2024, Vitalik still adheres to the Barbell strategy, claiming that this strategy keeps the Ethereum mainnet streamlined, neutral, and highly secure while allowing L2 networks experimental space in terms of scalability, user experience, and alternative block generation processes.
Vitalik does not view L2 as direct competition or failure but rather as a functional separation of responsibilities, where L2 actively optimizes performance and meets the needs of ordinary users, while L1 remains decentralized and serves as the ultimate authoritative source.
Although Vitalik emphasized the necessity of speeding up withdrawals, raising shard space fees, and increasing ETH-denominated assets, he believes that further development of L2 will make Ethereum an increasingly powerful gravitational center, allowing them to continue operating around it.
