- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has plans to make the network lighter to improve performance
- Buterin proposes to achieve this by reducing the number of signatures needed to sign a transaction
- Buterin believes that reducing the number of signatures will decrease Ethereum’s technical demands
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin continues to come up with ways to improve the network with plans to make it lighter being his latest proposal. Despite the network shifting to a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, Buterin thinks that Ethereum can be enhanced further by reducing the number of signatures required to sign transactions on the network. Buterin believes that slashing the number of signatures needed makes the network lighter and simpler, something that may reduce reliance on scaling platforms.
A Simpler, Lighter Ethereum
According to Buterin, the blockchain processes roughly 28,000 signatures per slot, which is brought about by the 895,000 validators currently securing the protocol.
A PoS simplification proposal: make a design that only requires 8192 signatures per slot (even with SSF), making the consensus implementation considerably simpler and lighter.https://t.co/Z8mK7vZx7g
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 27, 2023
Buterin wants to reduce the number of signatures to 8192 per slot to make the “consensus implementation considerably simpler and lighter.”
The Ethereum co-founder proposes to achieve his plans in three ways. One way is to rely on decentralized staking pools giving more power to pools supporting participants with few ETH staked.
Secondly, the network may choose to embrace a tiered staking system supporting light and heavy staking. With this approach, “for a block to finalize, both the heavy layer needs to finalize it and the light layer needs to have [at least] 50% of online light validators attest to it.”
Rotating Participation
The third way through which Buterin thinks that Ethereum can become lighter is by using rotating participation. This involves choosing 4096 validators for each slot and adjusting the list of validators for each set.
Buterin’s thoughts come a week after the EthereumPow team disclosed that they’ll be parting ways to achieve full autonomy, leaving the project in the hands of a DAO.
Although Buterin’s idea of making Ethereum lighter is just a proposal, it’s likely to be embraced by the community due to its viability.
