Vitalik Buterin argues against overloading Ethereum’s consensus

Vitalik Buterin has come out to say that there is no need to overload the Ethereum consensus, which is already regarded as the most secure crypto-economic system globally. It houses validators with over 18 million ETH in total. This roughly translates to $34 billion in monetary value.

Ethereum social consensus only has a way forward with a lot of ideas at the thought experiment stage. For instance, re-staking has been discussed to allow validators to use their stakes as deposits in a different protocol. This is a possibility for the approach that many protocols, like EigenLayer, have adopted. Notably, using stakes as deposits is just one way of re-staking.

Another example is recovering L2 projects through an L1-driven approach. This relates to recovering the L2 in a situation with a bug in the L1.

Finally, Vitalik Buterin mentioned that there was a pitch to create an ultimate oracle. Users would be able to vote by sending ETH. This would require the community to leverage the SchellingCoin mechanism.

It enables the community to send coins to vote for the majority answer and get a proportional share of ETH sent to vote for the minority answer. According to Vitalik Buterin, the only factor that breaks this mechanism is that members betting on the truth can go on to make a thread of forking Ethereum if they lose the share.

What made him speak about not overloading the consensus was the high systemic risk that such ideas have. Further, giving reasons as to why they should be discouraged and resisted.

The core idea is to understand that while it is okay to consider, or even implement, the dual usage of validator-staked ETH, it still has some risks that prevent it from being recruited for its own application’s purpose.

Amid the announcement, the trading price of ETH has begun fluctuating. Most of it is due to the volatility factor. Hence, the thought that the clarification has a lot to do with it should be ruled out. ETH was last seen being traded at $1,812.10. It is down by 0.30% in the last seven days, making people question will Ethereum rise in the days to come. Per expert estimates, there is a chance that the token could go as high as $3,904 by the end of 2023. However, it could also take a hit with the lower value of $1,607.

Back to Ethereum’s consensus, Vitalik simply puts out the thought that the purity of a blockchain can be maintained only if it is constructed on mathematical terms. When it comes into contact with the outside world, its conflicts may affect the blockchain negatively.

As a matter of fact, something as singular as a currency oracle could hurt the community’s sentiments. As a result, the network is completely destroyed.