One of Bitcoin’s “best things”: Vitalik Buterin proposes simplifying Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of the second-largest blockchain Ethereum and its frontman, has published a blog post where he proposes

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of the second-largest blockchain Ethereum and its frontman, has published a blog post where he proposes making several key modifications to the Ethereum layer-1 chain to let it mirror some of Bitcoin’s finest points.

In the post, Buterin focused on how it is critically important to simplify the Ethereum protocol, adding to it the simplicity of Bitcoin. He gave a brief recap of how Bitcoin works, saying that blocks on that chain are connected by a hash and verified by proof of work. Each block includes transactions, which spend coins.

“Even a smart high school student is capable of fully wrapping their head around and understanding the Bitcoin protocol,” Vitalik stated, “A programmer is capable of writing a client as a hobby project.”

One of the best things about Bitcoin is how simple it is. This simplicity has lots of benefits. Let's bring those benefits to Ethereum.

He also mentioned this simplicity of BTC in his X thread where he shared the link to the blog and he called for bringing those “Bitcoin benefits” to Ethereum: “One of the best things about Bitcoin is how simple it is. This simplicity has lots of benefits. Let's bring those benefits to Ethereum.”

In short, Vitalik proposes simplifying Ethereum’s layer 1 to make it run with the simplicity and all the consequential benefits of Bitcoin. He wants to lower Ethereum’s maintenance costs, to minimize bugs on the blockchain, and expand participation in protocol development. Buterin highlighted such Ethereum issues as EVM’s 256-bit architecture and precomplies, calling them over-optimized for outdated use-cases.

It will be worth it in the long term, Buterin insists

In his blog post, he also mentions the Ethereum 2025 roadmap and the Pectra upgrade. The latter intends to increase layer-2 data availability 10x, while Buterin states that if scalability, security, and decentralization get a major boost on layer-1, this would make Ethereum much more resilient and attractive for users and developers.

Caring about simplicity is, like decentralization, a short-term cost for the sake of benefits that do not appear immediately. But in the long term, it will be worth it. Let's make each part of the ethereum spec a place where things like this can happen:https://t.co/1yIiWfAbH8

Vitalik stressed that in the short term benefits of the changes proposed by him “do not appear immediately.” However, “in the long term, it will be worth it.” He suggested adding those modifications over the next five years.