By
Temitope Olatunji
April 18th, 2024
The Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted that the sharding implementation can take time. Meanwhile, he advised users to move to other layer-2 scaling solutions like rollups that offer 100x transaction throughput.
One of the biggest challenges ahead in front of Ethereum developers has been offering scalable solutions to users. The massive explosion in the use of Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms has pushed the gas fee to new highs. In 2020, the gas fee has surged from 8 cents to more than $14 by the last month of September. On the other hand, Ethereum users have been eagerly waiting for the release of Ethereum 2.0 that promises massive scalability. Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed the concept of “rollups”, Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solutions.
This layer-2 Ethereum solution proposes keeping the transactional data on-chain while moving the computational load off the chain.
Speaking at CoinDesk’s Invest: ethereum economy virtual conference, Vitalik Buterin re-iterated his stand on rollups. A few days back, Buterin said that rollups offer a 100x throughput in transactions per second. The transaction throughput will have a multiplicative effect when combined with sharding, the Ethereum 2.0 solution still under development.
Currently, we have ~15-45 TPS. Rollups offer a ~100x increase in throughput. Sharding offers a ~64x increase. These two stack multiplicatively; rollups *on top of* sharding offer a ~6400x (!!) increase in throughput.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 5, 2020
While sharding implementation seems to be a few years away from now, Buterin suggested users to start using rollups. Buterin has clearly specified that Rollups is not a replacement for sharding. Speaking at the conference Buterin added:
“If you’re listening to this and you are an exchange or you are a wallet or you are a mining pool or you are a major user – even just a regular – then you should be aware of what rollups are and what they do. Basically, what your strategy is, in terms of moving over to them.”
Besides, Buterin also spoke about ZK Rollups using zero-knowledge-proof. According to Buterin, these rollups with push transactions throughputs anywhere between 1000-4000.
Ethereum 2.0 Developments and Moving to Proof-of-Stake
The Ethereum developers have been having a tough time dealing with the Ethereum 2.0 launch. The launch of phase 0 i.e. the beacon chain is likely to happen very soon.
Speaking about the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) implementation of Ethereum 2.0, Buterin said that stakers can be net-profitable if they remain online for a minimum of 50-60% of the time. “Some of the other proof-of-stake chains that are coming out [are] saying if you’re offline for 12 hours you get slashed, which kind of, I think, is absolutely insane,” he added.
Higher staking will come with higher resources and complexity said Buterin. Buterin also spoke enthusiastically about the Ethereum platform’s proposed fee market reform. He noted that they will first experiment with a flexible block size cap. Citing the existing usage levels, Buterin said that since the fees get destroyed, it is “very likely the amount of ether getting burned from fees is going to exceed the amount of issuance going to stakers”.