Vitalik's latest speech transcript: In the future, Ethereum will achieve key goals such as over 100,000 TPS through L2

Organizer: PANews

On October 17, the "10th Global Blockchain Summit" hosted by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab officially commenced. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in his speech, reviewed the development path of Ethereum and looked forward to the future, stating, "In the future, Ethereum can achieve over 100,000 TPS through L2, and transfers from any Ethereum chain to other chains can be realized within 2 seconds, even forming a unified user experience. Additionally, Ethereum's infrastructure is also expanding, and the link to security is more important than EVM."

Here is the full text of the speech:

Good morning, everyone!

The Ethereum project started in November 2013, the Ethereum Foundation began in 2014, and the issuance of Ethereum started in July 2015.

The main goal of the Ethereum project over the past decade has been to develop Ethereum technology. If you listen to my speeches from 2015, 2016, and 2017, you might find that my views back then are quite similar to what I am saying now. In 2022, we merged from POW to POS, and I also talked about scalability, privacy, zero-knowledge proof technology, and some security issues. In fact, what we are doing now is quite similar to what we were doing five or ten years ago. However, there has been significant progress over the past decade.

How to see the progress?

First is the transaction fees for Ethereum Layer 2. Sending a transaction requires paying the corresponding transaction fee. In 2020 and 2021, you might remember that there was no Layer 2; at that time, Layer 2 was just an idea, and the transaction fees on Layer 1 were particularly high, sometimes $5, sometimes $10, which was a lot. The highest transaction fee I paid was $800.

In 2022 and 2023, we started to have some Layer 2 solutions, which are much cheaper than Layer 1, but still not cheap enough.

At that time, there was a significant scalability issue. In 2022 and 2023, we began to have Layer 2, which was much cheaper than Layer 1, but still not cheap enough. In March of this year, we introduced a very important concept, EIP-4844, which allows for more data space on Layer 2, enabling some Layer 2 transaction functionalities, thus reducing transaction fees from $0.2 to $0.01, which is a significant difference. For many applications, if you tell users that doing anything on-chain only costs $0.4, developers feel that this is completely unacceptable. If transaction fees can be reduced to $0.01, that would be a completely different matter.

In fact, there are many AGI applications that can also be developed now. Because when applications have a large number of transactions, users are unwilling to pay $0.2, but for non-TURBO applications, users are accustomed to free transactions, and $0.01 can be considered very small. Developers can cover these costs for users, which is a success for Ethereum in social applications. By solving related issues, we have reduced the transaction fee problem.

Second, transaction confirmation speed.

This refers to how much time it takes for a transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain after you send it. As you know, the average block time for Bitcoin is 10 minutes, sometimes 65 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes, and sometimes 70 minutes; the confirmation time is very unstable. Ethereum's initial block time was 17 seconds, then changed to 4 seconds, and then to 12 seconds. However, we have a problem with the efficiency of transaction fees (Gas). When you send a transaction, the transaction fee can be very high. If the transaction fee is too low, you may find yourself waiting a long time, possibly 5 minutes or 30 minutes, for your transaction to be included in a block. However, in 2021, we implemented the EIP-1559 protocol, and after EIP-1559, users' waiting time became very short. In fact, most of the time, after you send a transaction, you will find that your transaction has been confirmed in the corresponding block, which happens about 90% of the time. In the remaining 10% of cases, you still have to wait for the corresponding block, but the time you need to wait is very low. This is Layer 2.

In 2023 and 2024, our primary goal is to solve the scalability issue and create cheaper transactions by sending your transactions to Layer 2 nodes, which will directly send you confirmation messages and include your transactions in the next block. If you are willing to trust Layer 2 nodes, you can know that your transaction has been confirmed within 1 second or 0.5 seconds. This is also a very important aspect.

Third, user experience across various applications.

On the left, you can see the interface based on Ethereum from 2015, called EtherTweet. This is a very simple thing and obviously an early version; if you are not a blockchain user, you wouldn't know what Ethereum means. On the right, you can see Firefly (Farcaster + Twitter + Lens Client), which is a client they developed. Everyone knows that Farcaster is the largest social platform based on Ethereum.

In this Firefly interface, you will notice that the quality of the client is very good. Why did I mention three? You might have seen some information indicating that in some countries, including Argentina and Turkey, over 10% of the national population holds digital currency. I found that there are indeed many digital currency users in these places, but there is a problem: they are not blockchain users. They use their digital currencies through some centralized services. Why? Because transactions through centralized services, transferring from one account to another, are free, and there is no waiting time. Additionally, the interfaces are well designed.

If we want these users to not only be digital currency users but also blockchain users, truly experiencing the trustless nature of blockchain, we need to solve the blockchain issues.

There are also many advancements in the topic of smart accounts and account abstraction. We have made significant progress this year; this is a well-known multi-signature wallet that many people are using. ZKEmail allows you to have an email account that can use Ethereum smart contracts, implemented through zero-knowledge proofs.

There are also some issues with account abstraction.

Then there is the topic of zero-knowledge proofs. I have been discussing zero-knowledge proofs since 2015. The technology of zero-knowledge proofs has developed a lot; in 2016, a Zcash transaction took 90 seconds or 2 minutes on a computer, and it was completely impossible on a mobile phone. Now, sending a protocol can be done in 1 second on a mobile phone, so the progress is significant. For example, Zupass is based on zero-knowledge proofs for identity; Rarimo uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify the information in your passport.

The user experience of wallets has also greatly improved.

So over the past decade, there have indeed been many technological advancements, and these advancements have brought many benefits to users. Five years ago, we could only do some early-stage things. However, it was impossible for blockchain applications to become mainstream users, but now it is possible.

So what is our main issue now? For Ethereum, there is an important issue: everyone feels that the Ethereum ecosystem is like a 30-year-old person; what we should do is create a unified ecosystem for Ethereum.

If you have coins on other chains and want to transfer them to another chain, the process is very complicated. A user needs to go to a specific website, and the entire process is complex, making it easy to make mistakes. If you want to send a coin and do not select the correct network, you will send it incorrectly. So now we have many challenges, mainly in this area.

Additionally, I have an important topic, which is chain-specific addresses.

There is also the ERC-7683 protocol, which is a protocol for trading coins. You can use this protocol to trade your coins for coins on another chain. If we combine these two, the process of issuing coins will become very simple.

Another topic is lightweight clients. Most users currently access through an RPS and some nodes, depending on what they want to see. This RDC process is based on trust and is centralized. There is a project that uses Helios as a lightweight client without L2. If you have an L2, you can place a contract on the Ethereum chain, and L2 can pin its Merkle proof verification function in the bridge contract, serving as a universal lightweight client. In fact, we have many solutions to address various issues.

Another very important topic is the development of zero-knowledge proofs. In the past five years, zero-knowledge proofs have transitioned from a theoretical concept to something that many people can use. Therefore, zero-knowledge proofs now have many on-chain applications and some off-chain applications. The largest circle is quite interesting; Crypto is not moving forward. So now in Crypto, I believe that for non-financial applications to succeed, they need to incorporate a part on the blockchain and also have a large off-chain component. This is because non-financial applications require much more Gas than financial applications. You send how many transactions daily, how much you pay, etc. You engage in non-financial applications daily, such as posting something on social media. Therefore, I believe that blockchain cannot handle everything.

Let's talk about the future of Ethereum.

First, achieving over 100,000 TPS through L2. A Google article states that this goal can be achieved through certain methods.

Second, enabling transfers from any Ethereum chain to any other chain within 2 seconds.

Third, creating a unified user experience, which is very important.

Fourth, not just EVM: the link to security is more important than EVM. Ethereum's technology is expanding; Ethereum has both EVM and non-EVM components. For Ethereum, the link to security means whether your chain is protected by Ethereum, which is more important than EVM. This is the technical direction we still need to pursue.

There are many things that can be started now. So if you have some ideas but failed before, I believe now is the time to try again. With the current technology, things that did not succeed before may (perhaps) succeed now.