Vitalik Buterin highlights what he’s bullish about for 2023

January 2, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The Ethereum co-founder expects to reach a new milestone for rollups this year.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared some bullishness for the year ahead, including reaching a new milestone for rollup scaling as per the Ethereum roadmap.

The Ethereum developer also confirmed the rollout of the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4884 sometime in 2023, which had been removed as part of the upcoming Shanghai upgrade package set for March.

Responding to a Dec. 31 post from former chief technology officer of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, asking users what they were bullish for in 2023, Buterin said he was looking forward to reaching the “basic rollup scaling” milestone as outlined in the Ethereum roadmap.

Reaching the "basic rollup scaling" milestone in my roadmap diagram.

That means:

* EIP-4844 rolled out
* Rollups partially taking off training wheels, at least to "stage 1" as described here https://t.co/qNQonDQkzG pic.twitter.com/7HePctWw1l
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 31, 2022

He explained that this meant the rollout of The Surge-related Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4884.

EIP-4884 was initially expected to be packaged in with Shanghai, introducing “proto-danksharding” to significantly enhance layer-2 rollup scalability (The Surge) ahead of the full implementation of the major Sharding upgrade late next year.

He also said that this would mean that rollups would be “partially taking off training wheels, at least to stage 1” referring to a Nov. 22 post on the “Ethereum Magicians forum” which describes three stages of “trust model” based on how mature a project's tech was.

Stage 0, which Buterin likens to having “full training wheels” has the requirements for all transactions being on-chain and providing users the ability to withdraw their assets without the operator.

Stage 1 or “limited training wheels” must have a transaction verification method such as a fraud proof or validity proof scheme to accept or reject which transactions are allowed by the smart contract, along with an overriding security council to oversee the process.

While stage 2, has “no training wheels” and must have two distinct fraud provers, two distinct validity provers, or one of each. Upgrades are allowed at this stage but must have a delay of more than 30 days.

In a separate Twitter post one day earlier on Dec. 30, Buterin also made some comments on what he believes a “Good Crypto Future” might look like.

Buterin outlined several areas of crypto that would need to be fixed, including scaling, privacy, user experience and making user accounts more secure for average users than centralized services.

He also sees payments and decentralized finance (DeFi) being part of this future, and new organizational paradigms powered by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Ethereum (ETH) Founder Vitalik Buterin Offers Support for Solana Developers As SOL Stumbles Into 2023

December 30, 2022 The Daily Hodl

ETH staking on top exchanges contributes to Ethereum censorship: Data

December 26, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

One of the biggest factors harming Ethereum's credible neutrality is the use of censoring MEV relays by crypto ecosystems and exchanges.

For most crypto ecosystems, being compliant with federal sanctions have a negative impact on its global reach. However, when it comes to Ethereum, investors have significant power to decide the degree of compliance the ecosystem obeys.

Nearly 60% of all post-Merge Ethereum blocks comply with the United States sanctions put forth by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). While the crypto community stands against this transformation, many fail to realize their own contribution to helping Ethereum attain total OFAC compliance.

One of the biggest factors harming Ethereum's credible neutrality is the use of censoring MEV relays by crypto ecosystems and exchanges. Miner extractable value (MEV) relays work as a mediator between block producers and block builders, which are being used by prominent crypto players, such as Binance, Celsius Network, Coinbase, Kraken and Cream Finance, to name a few.

*Top Ethereum censorship offenders leaderboard. Source: MEV Watch*

Users staking Ether (ETH) on platforms (as shown above) that run censoring MEV relays on their validators are directly contributing to the censorship of Ethereum. Crypto platforms can help remediate the situation by adopting a non-censoring MEV-boost relay.

For validators and relay operators, some of the popular MEV-boost relays that don’t promote censorship include Ultra Sound Money, Agnostic Boost, Aestus, BloXroute Max Profit, BloxRoute Ethical, Manifold and Relayooor.

*OFAC compliance data for last 100 Ethereum blocks. Source: MEV Watch*

At the time of writing, 67 of the last 100 Ethereum blocks were found enforcing OFAC compliance.

As investors, it is important to understand that protocol-level censorship is deterrent to crypto’s goal of unleashing open and inclusive finance. Hence, it becomes important for both investors and service providers to opt for non-censoring MEV-boost relays.

The Ethereum ecosystem recently witnessed two dormant addresses wake up after four years to transfer 22,982 ETH.

#PeckShieldAlert 2 Dormant addresses transferred 22,982 $ETH (~27.2M) to 2 fresh addresses, their last movement was October 2018 (1,535 days ago).
These $ETH originated from Genesis and Poloniex pic.twitter.com/MXKpLnypif
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) December 19, 2022

The ETH transfers in question can be traced back to trading platforms Genesis and Poloniex where the unknown whales transferred 13,103.99 ETH and 9,878 ETH, respectively.

Ethereum Creator Vitalik Buterin Names Four Reasons Why the World Needs Crypto Money

December 21, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Names Three ‘Huge Opportunities’ in Crypto Right Now

December 19, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Vitalik Buterin Names 5 Things Happening in Ethereum (ETH) That He’s Excited About

December 5, 2022 The Daily Hodl

Vitalik Buterin discusses his ‘excitement’ for the future of Ethereum

December 5, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Buterin was specifically bullish on the rise of decentralized blockchain identities to enhance user privacy.

In a blog post dated Dec. 5, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote that money, blockchain identities, decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and hybrid applications were the top developments he was excited about in the Ethereum ecosystem. Buterin then described his experience in using Ether as a means of payment in a cafe in Argentina:

"When we walked in, the owner recognized me, and immediately showed me that he has ETH and other crypto-assets on his Binance account. We ordered tea and snacks, and we asked if we could pay in ETH. The coffee shop owner obliged, and showed me the QR code for his Binance deposit address, to which I sent about $20 of ETH from my Status wallet on my phone."

Buterin continued that due to side effects of The Merge, "transactions get included significantly more quickly, and the chain has become more stable, making it safer to accept transactions after fewer confirmations." The Ethereum co-founder then contrasted it with his earlier coffee experience, where at the time, network fees accounted for one-third of the transaction, and funds took several minutes to arrive.

Then, speaking of the rise of DeFi, Buterin commented that the industry started off honorable and limited but quickly became "an overcapitalized monster that relied on unsustainable forms of yield forming." However, he added that DeFi is in the "early stages of setting down into a stable medium, improving security, and refocusing on a few applications that are particularly valuable."

Honestly I think we emphasize flashy defi things that give you fancy high interest rates way too much. Interest rates significantly higher than what you can get in traditional finance are inherently either temporary arbitrage opportunities or come with unstated risks attached.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 20, 2020

Next, Buterin praised the rise of blockchain identification methods, such as the Sign In With Ethereum (SIWE), and their ability to enhance user privacy. "[SIWE] it allows you to interact with a site without giving Google or Facebook access to your private information or the ability to take over or lock you out of your account," wrote Buterin. Furthermore, he said such protocols could also be used to prove eligibility in events like governance or airdrops without compromising users' personal data.

Regarding the topic of DAOs, Buterin said while they "captures many of the hopes and dreams that people have put into the crypto space to build more democratic, resilient and efficient forms of governance," greater work needs to be done to improve censorship resistance and susceptibility to internal organization. Highlighting the example of MakerDAO, Buterin wrote:

"MakerDAO has $7.8 billion in collateral, over 17x the market cap of the profit-taking token, MKR. Hence, if governance was up to MKR holders with no safeguards, someone could buy up half the MKR, use that to manipulate the price oracles, and steal a large portion of the collateral for themselves."

Finally, the Ethereum co-founder noted the potential of merging Ethereum blockchain technology with off-chain processes, such as voting. In one scenario, Buterin wrote: "Votes are published to the blockchain, so users have a way independent of the voting system to ensure that their votes get included. But votes are encrypted, preserving privacy, and a ZK-SNARK-based solution."

As for the next steps, Buterin stuck to his belief of prioritizing projects with long-term value propositions rather than those fixated on short-term profits. "Many of the more stable and boring applications do not get built because there is less excitement and less short-term profit to be earned around them: the LUNA market cap got to over $30 billion, while stablecoins striving for robustness and simplicity often get largely ignored for years," he wrote. Post-Merge, Ethereum's next major anticipated update is the Shanghai Upgrade, which would enable users to withdraw their staked Ether. The Upgrade is scheduled for the second half of 2023.

I propose the term "alfalfa leak" for something that doesn't give you an easy path to short term profit, but is still ultimately good for you.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 5, 2022

Vitalik Buterin on the crypto blues: Focus on the tech, not the price

December 5, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Price

The Ethereum co-founder has recommended weary crypto investors to shift away from price watching and focus on the tech instead.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared some sage advice for traders feeling the blues of the crypto bear market: Focus on the tech rather than the price.

The Ethereum co-founder made the recommendation in response to a Dec. 3 post from self-described crypto investor CoinMamba, echoing what many crypto investors are likely feeling at the moment.

After 9 years in crypto I’m kinda exhausted. I want to move on and do something different with my life. Tired of all these scammers and fraudsters..
— CoinMamba (@coinmamba) December 3, 2022

"After 9 years in crypto I’m kinda exhausted. I want to move on and do something different with my life. Tired of all these scammers and fraudsters," CoinMamba said.

The crypto industry has continued to be bombarded with unsavoury news since the collapse of FTX and the resulting contagion, which recently claimed crypto exchange BlockFi.

BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr recently confirmed it was hit by a multi-million dollar exploit on Dec. 1.

Even before that, hackers had already been responsible for the theft of over $2.98 billion in digital assets in 2022, according to statistics from blockchain security firm PeckShield.

A large chunk was from the Ronin bridge exploit, which resulted in $625 million in crypto assets being pilfered back in March.

However, as a means to combat all the negativity, Buterin suggests moving away from trading / investing “circles” and instead, getting closer to the “tech and application ecosystem.”

"I'd recommend increasing your distance from trading/investing circles, and getting closer to the tech and application ecosystem," he said.

“Learn about ZK-SNARKs, visit a meetup in Latin America, listen to All Core Devs calls and read the notes until you've memorized all the EIP numbers…” he added.

Ether bull and host of The Daily Gwei Anthony Sassano agreed, saying the bear market is the "perfect time" to shift away from market watching and learn more about the tech.

"Much more signal than noise (especially in the Ethereum ecosystem) and the tech side is so much more exciting than the markets anyway."

Ethereum has given investors plenty to focus on this year, with the completion of the long-awaited Merge on Sept. 15, which saw the network shift away from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.

Buterin later added a new category of milestones to the Ethereum technical roadmap, one that aims to improve censorship resistance and decentralization of the Ethereum network.

"Being in it for the tech is already a significant and positive culture pivot, relative to being in it for price movements," said Buterin in his recent Twitter post.

In November, Buterin told Bloomberg that the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange brought lessons for the entire crypto ecosystem.

He labeled the FTX collapse as a “huge tragedy” but also noted that the problem was in people, not technology — adding that the underlying stability of distributed ledger and the technology powering the crypto asset economy has not come into question.