Ethereum’s 20-year evolution: Vitalik explains the cross-era journey from high gas fees to on-chain governance.
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At today's EDCON 2024 conference, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin gave an inspiring speech, looking forward to "The Next Decade of Ethereum". He outlined a picture full of innovation and change by reviewing the past decade and looking forward to the future.
From the "money-burning era" to "ruling the world with one cent"
Remember the time when gas fees were more expensive than punks to buy CryptoPunks? Vitalik recalled humorously: "I never thought someone would spend $2 million to buy a digital monkey." Today, thanks to expansion technology, we have entered a "new era of saving money" with transaction costs of only 1 cent. From "can't wait a minute" to "get everything done in 5 seconds", Ethereum's evolution speed is faster than a rocket!
Looking back over the past decade
1. Changes in social interfaces: From EtherTweet in 2015 to the current multi-client Firefly, the continuous optimization of user experience and underlying architecture has improved efficiency and reduced costs. Firefly is known as the "Farcaster+Twitter+Lens client". Posts published using Firefly can be published to Farcaster and Lens at the same time.
2. Improvements in on-chain interactions: In 2019, the cost of using the mainnet was relatively high, and ZK-SNARKs were even more expensive. Now, transaction costs are usually less than one cent. Ethereum has significantly reduced related fees and increased transaction processing speeds through expansion over the past decade. In terms of confirmation time (Tx inclusion time), in 2019, it usually took 1 to 5 minutes, and if you were unlucky, you might have to wait up to 60 minutes to include the transaction. Now, after the implementation of EIP-1559, this process has been improved to 5~20 seconds, and second-level confirmation has been achieved on Layer2.
3. Popularization of smart contract wallets: EIP-4337 improves the applicability and security of wallets. In the next five years, smart contract wallets such as Safe will become mainstream.
Ethereum in 2034: When your wallet knows you better than you do
In terms of wallet interface, Vitalik pointed out that the Ethereum wallet in 2024 should break the homogeneity of Ethereum and Bitcoin in 2015, and be more inclined to provide a smooth experience of traditional applications. He is committed to creating a new type of on-chain social system that transcends the existing paradigm. At the same time, a zero-knowledge proof voting system developed by a Ukrainian company is gradually taking shape, with the goal of enhancing the credibility of the voting process and laying the foundation for transparent, efficient and secure voting governance in the future of 2034, and may even be combined with financial elements.
In terms of expansion strategy, Vitalik expects that the size of blobs will gradually expand to 16 MB mainnet blocks, and transaction compression technology will be used to ensure that users can still enjoy a high-quality experience in an expansion environment. He hopes that future wallets will be able to integrate more self-sovereignty and security on the basis of traditional user experience, and adopt a "guardian" model that combines on-chain and off-chain to provide stronger protection for users' assets. By then, the combination of Web2 user experience and Web3 sovereignty value will greatly improve security.
He also mentioned that the interactive front end will achieve a standardized experience, reduce the risk of user misdirection and improve convenience by integrating multi-chain interactions. Vitalik encouraged builders to not only copy Web2, but also to explore the unknown. In the future, there will be not only desktop and mobile devices, but also wearable devices, locally run AI, AR, and emerging technologies such as brain-computer interfaces (BCI), which will provide built-in practical tools for wallets and browsers to provide on-chain content verification and security.
Vitalik concluded that the development of Ethereum over the past decade has focused on theory, and as developers are able to provide high-quality user experience, truly powerful and influential applications have emerged on Ethereum. He emphasized that future attention should shift to how to build applications that can impact the world while maintaining user value and truly realizing the original intention of cryptocurrency.
Final Thoughts
Vitalik called on developers not to limit themselves to copying Web2, but to be brave enough to explore. He said: "What kind of applications do we want to build? How do we build them while preserving everyone's values? This requires the joint efforts of each of us."
Dear builders, have you heard the call of the future? Perhaps ten years from now, we will look back at today's blockchain technology with a smile, just like we look back at Ethereum in 2014. Which "black technology" are you most looking forward to?
Source: @TokenPocket_CN
