Vitalik Buterin Unveils Plan to Simplify Ethereum’s PoS Process

• Buterin put forth a plan to lessen the stress on validators by decreasing signatures.
• Ethereum supports a large number of validators—roughly 895,000 as of this writing.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has suggested a method to simplify the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus process “considerably simpler and lighter,” thereby reducing the strain on the Ethereum blockchain.

Vitalik Buterin put forth a plan to lessen the stress on validators by decreasing the amount of signatures they need to generate on December 28. To further its decentralization goals and make staking accessible to the general public, Ethereum supports a large number of validators—roughly 895,000 as of this writing.

Simplifying the Process

Nevertheless, there are significant technological drawbacks to having that many validators. The network would have to handle an enormous amount of signatures—roughly 28,000 each slot—”which is a very high load,” he pointed out.

In addition, he detailed the many compromises that must be made in order to sustain this load, including scaling signatures using zero-knowledge proofs (SNARKs), simplifying forking, and minimizing quantum resistance.

Additionally, it falls short of its intended objective of attracting average users as many still cannot afford to invest the 32 ETH required to become a validator. Buterin proposed a middle ground option with 8,192 signatures per slot, down from the present 28,000, rather than attempting to make an ever-increasing number of signatures per slot work.

This would make the chain more resistant to quantum computing, simplify the technology significantly, and maintain the total amount of slashable ETH high, at around 1-2 million ETH. Slashing is a system that is set up to make sure that validators behave well.

Depending just on decentralized staking pools, a two-tiered system with “heavy” and “light” staking, and alternating participation with responsible committees are the three possible options that Buterin proposed.

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