Buterin reveals future plans for Ethereum

The 23-year-old Etherum project creator, Vitalik Buterin, recently revealed his plans for the future of the cryptocurrency during Ethereum’s annual conference, Devcon. In what Buterin called a 'modest proposal', he laid out his long-term vision for the future, which mainly consists of plans to use the next three to four years to focus on the development of the blockchain. While many Ethereum experts and enthusiasts have been expecting this change for some time now, this is the first time Buterin has confirmed and elaborated on his strategy.

Most of Buterin’s future plans revolved around a long-anticipated technical change that he intends to make in the blockchain, known as 'sharding'. Sharding refers to a technique which would divide the incoming data into separate compartments. This way a single node will only be responsible for a small part of the total data. If done correctly, the math behind the technique would keep the system accountable, as nodes would depend on one another.

While his plan addressed several problems he expects to encounter in the process, Buterin emphasized the issue of scalability. Since Ethereum nodes are required to store all transactions and actions on the network itself, Buterin stated that there is a demand to discover a way to allow the network to cut storage costs, especially as the system grows. Buterin has addressed this problem several times before, especially since the developer started to investigate the issue.

In fact, much of his speech was aimed at the importance of finding an adequate solution. Buterin stressed this when he stated that the activity currently taking place on the Ethereum network is already much higher than it was just a few years, or even months, ago. According to Buterin, there are currently 20,000 active nodes on the Ethereum network and he cautioned that the network might soon reach its limit.

The emphasis was continually placed on the issue of scalability, as Buterin referred back to it several times. He believes that no current system is actively working on solving the issue. It is true that this challenge will be no small feat to take on. Despite these statements, Buterin remained convinced that the solution lies in sharding.

However, the practice is much more difficult than the underlying theory, as nodes would have to communicate with one another without being compromised or sending false data. What made Buterin’s speech significant is that he proposed to introduce a new sharding technique, which would address his concerns of scalability and governance. Essentially he intends to introduce a system which can maintain and govern itself.

In his proposal, Buterin state that he intends to split the Ethereum network into separate shards. The main shard would be what we currently know as the Ethereum network. However, other shards, or “universes”, will soon be added.

Buterin suggested making big changes on the smaller shards and only small adjustments on the main shard, in order to maintain stability overall. This would allow developers to test changes, while the network can still function optimally for its users.

Other changes included upgrading the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The EVM is a system which ensures compliance with smart contract and communicates this to the underlying network. Buterin also acknowledged the project eWASM, which would enable users to run Ethereum within their browsers. Additionally, a feature referred to as stateless clients, which would provide a way for users to connect to the Ethereum network faster, was proposed.

Developers to participate in the upcoming upgrades. Most of the research is currently stored on GitHub.

To conclude, Buterin hinted that he's already quite far along in his effort and that his team is just a few tweaks away from being able to test the new concepts in python.