The Ethereum price has slumped over 1% in the last 24 hours to trade at $1,817

This message arrives at a time when Ethereum, despite recent technological upgrades like proof-of-stake and zk-SNARK integration, is facing criticism over growing complexity

The Ethereum price has slid over 1% in the last 24 hours to reach $1,817 by 3:00 a.m. EST on Tuesday on an 11% surge in trading volume to $10 billion.

The slight drop in the ETH price comes as co-founder Vitalik Buterin calls for a return to simplicity in the network’s design. Ideally, Buterin suggested that Ethereum should aim to become as simple as Bitcoin within the next five years.

Buterin argued that simplicity makes the protocol more understandable and reduces development costs, minimizes security risks, and streamlines infrastructure.

This message arrives at a time when Ethereum, despite recent technological upgrades like proof-of-stake and zk-SNARK integration, is facing criticism over growing complexity and developer bloat.

Buterin acknowledged that some of Ethereum’s past choices may have chased theoretical gains at the expense of practicality and sustainability.

"We can summarize the ideal direction of travel for the next 3-5 years as being 'toward Bitcoinization' - in the sense that we want to make L1 as simple, robust and low-maintenance as possible, and move more and more complexity offchain into dapps and rollups," stated Buterin in a new blog post.

Simplicity over Gains

In his post, Buterin highlighted how Bitcoin’s simplicity has contributed to its security and stability. He noted that over the past 15 years, Bitcoin has never suffered a major security breach, attributing this fact to the core protocol’s small size and relative simplicity.

In contrast, Buterin pointed out that Ethereum has encountered several smaller-scale vulnerabilities, some of which were critical, due to the increasing complexity of the protocol and the vast codebase that needs to be secured.

"It's also worth noting that while Bitcoin has largely stalled out on new features, it's still going strong today. In the case of Ethereum, we've seen that some of the protocol changes that were supposed to bring huge gains in theory ended up being either very difficult to implement or had less impact than expected," stated Buterin.

He further argued that aiming for simplicity in the L1 protocol allows for greater efficiency, security, and accessibility. A simple protocol is easier to understand, leading to lower development costs and fewer errors. Moreover, simplicity reduces the attack surface, strengthening security.

"We want L1 to be simple, robust and boring, and we want to move more and more complexity into dapps and rollups."

The Ethereum co-founder also touched upon the importance of modularity in enabling diverse use cases and efficient resource utilization.

Buterin concluded by emphasizing the need to prioritize sustainability and simplicity in the long run. He noted that Bitcoin's design philosophy of simplicity and robustness has served it well, and Ethereum can benefit from adopting a similar approach.

"Let's strive to create an L1 protocol that is as simple, secure, and efficient as possible, building upon the strengths of Bitcoin's design principles."