Ethereum’s co-founder has announced ambitious plans to enhance the network’s consensus model, emphasizing single-slot finality, improved staking accessibility, and increased validator participation.
Following the successful completion of the Merge, which transitioned Ethereum’s consensus algorithm from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlights that there are still critical areas for improvement within the proof-of-stake model.
In a recent blog post, Buterin pointed out the need for significant enhancements to mitigate centralization risks and optimize overall functionality. The roadmap distinguishes between vital technical improvements—such as stability and validator accessibility—and necessary economic changes to tackle centralization concerns.
A key focus is the introduction of single-slot finality, aimed at reducing block finalization time from the current 15 minutes to just 12 seconds, or even as low as four seconds. This change is expected to substantially enhance user experience on both layer-1 protocols and rollups, making decentralized finance protocols more efficient.
Another urgent issue is the democratization of staking. Presently, participating in staking requires a minimum of 32 ETH (approximately $81,500), which poses a significant barrier. Buterin proposes reducing the threshold to 1 ETH to boost solo staking participation.
“Poll after poll repeatedly show that the main factor preventing more people from solo staking is the 32 ETH minimum. Reducing the minimum to 1 ETH would resolve this concern, making other issues the primary barriers to solo staking.”
To implement these enhancements, Buterin outlined various strategies. One potential method involves utilizing ZK-SNARKs to improve signature aggregation, allowing millions of validators’ signatures to be processed within each slot.
He also introduced the concept of “orbit committees,” consisting of randomly selected medium-sized groups to finalize the chain while upholding strong security measures.
To address staking challenges, Buterin suggested implementing a “two-tiered staking” model, creating two classes of stakers: one with higher deposit requirements and another with lower. This approach aims to foster a more inclusive staking environment while ensuring economic finality.
While the timeline for these proposals remains uncertain, Buterin stressed the ongoing need for development to find a balance between simplicity and functionality, highlighting the importance of adopting a protocol that is “sufficiently simple” for implementation on the mainnet.
