By
Steve Muchoki
April 19th, 2024
Vitalik Buterin has revealed that there are some things developers could have made better from the start. For example, he has noted that the idea of gas fees could have been improved.
Co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin has expressed some regret about the Ethereum ecosystem’s ongoing development. According to him, Ethereum would run a lot differently if he started building the platform now, from scratch. The comments from Vitalik Buterin come as Ethereum is getting ready to launch its long-awaited Ethereum 2.0 mainnet.
Speaking during a July 2 episode of the Hashing It Out podcast, Buterin admits that there are a few things developers could have gotten right from the start. For example, Buterin says Ethereum’s idea of gas fees could have been better. Specifically, he said the developers “didn’t really do a good job of setting [gas rates] in the beginning.”
Vitalik Buterin Says Ethereum Could Be Different
In addition to gas fees, Buterin admits that developers on the platform also did not prepare for scaling as much as they should have. The co-founder specified that the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model, as well as sharding, could have been better planned for.
“Had we known that it would end up taking us years, we probably would have designed the roadmap differently and thought about what the different teams would be working on differently and making a lot of decisions in that regard in a very different way from how we are now, so, I think, definitely a lot of regrets and wasted time in that regard.”
Generally, Buterin and his team severely underestimated the length of time required to complete many of the things they didn’t immediately begin when Ethereum launched in 2015.
Ethereum 2.0
Coming at this time, Buterin’s comments are noteworthy considering how long it has taken the team to launch Ethereum 2.0. Aimed to improve and upgrade the Ethereum blockchain with a significant focus on scalability, Ethereum 2.0 has been in the works for years. However, members of the Ethereum community were left disappointed more than a few times due to repeated postponements.
The co-founder’s comments could serve as an explanation for the disappointment with the ETH 2.0 release. While Buterin did not explicitly say so, building and scalability problems could very easily have affected efforts at launching ETH 2.0. Initially, the launch date for ETH 2.0 was January 2020. However, members of the community are no longer sure when ETH 2.0 will launch.
ETH 2.0 and Cardano
Ethereum’s repeated postponement of ETH 2.0 could prove quite advantageous for Cardano. While ETH continues to struggle with scaling, Cardano uses a process called Hydra Sharding. With Hydra Sharding, Cardano can run up to 1 million transactions per second. Cardano’s ADA also jumped earlier this month, to its current position as the 8th largest cryptocurrency, from the 10th position. Cardano is still well behind Ethereum due to the sheer number of developers and dApps on the latter. However, “Ethereum Killer” has gained as a colloquial name for Cardano because of its potential.
Similar to Ethereum 2.0, the Cardano community is also awaiting the Shelley mainnet.