With a major Arrow Glacier upgrade expected in about three days, ETH 2.0 is closer than ever. At the time of writing, ETH 2.0 deposit contracts topped the staked value of 8,525,844 Ether.
Meanwhile, co-founder Vitalik Buterin felt that “Ethereum is very well positioned to adapt to this future world, despite the inherent uncertainty.” Buterin shared a “plausible road map” for the chain’s future, adding,
“Ethereum is open to all of the futures, and does not have to commit to an opinion about which one will necessarily win.”
To solve the problem of centralizing a “large blockchain”, Buterin proposed solutions such as “a second level of staking, with low resource requirements”, and the addition of secondary transaction channels as well as evidence of fraud. . This, according to the Canadian programmer, can decentralize validation while block production remains centralized.
With that, Buterin looked at a possible future where Ethereum has space for rollups’ on-chain data between its shards. We can understand rollups as solutions where transactions are executed outside Ethereum, but its data ends up on the Layer 1 mainnet. A solution, as per Buterin, that can somewhat bypass censorship. He reiterated,
“No aggregate succeeds in getting closer to the majority of Ethereum’s business.”
Therefore, he hinted at a “multi-rollup future for Ethereum,” to tackle some existing censorship concerns.
Nonetheless, Buterin noted that there is a good chance that block production will end up centralizing and therefore, several “protocol-level techniques” will need to be used to get around this. Something that can turn block production into a niche market, according to the co-founder.
A future where Buterin stated that Ethereum’s structure already incorporates “anti-fraud and anti-censorship armor.”
Buterin also believes that a “bright future for scalable blockchains is likely to emerge.”
In response, developer SwagtimusPrime.eth was quick to point out its impact on gas fees in the coming months. Here, it is noteworthy that EIP-4490 and EIP-4488 were recently proposed for scaling rollups and lowering transaction fees.
With that, it should be noted that former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal is bullish on Ethereum. In a recent interview, he said ETH would likely end up “this year closer to $ 15,000 than $ 10,000”. Longer term, he predicted a level of $ 20,000 by March of next year with a possibility of $ 40,000 thereafter.
