He presented the future direction of the blockchain industry in his book "2049." He said, "(When designing blockchain services) you usually make two wrong choices: sacrifice decentralization,
But we don't have to choose between the two. We have to have both: decentralization and practicality.
" Buterin said that cryptocurrencies have already moved on from their early days. It has been 15 years since Bitcoin was released, and 10 years since Ethereum was released.
However, he said that virtual currencies are still in their infancy in terms of being "usable," because the time has not yet come when everyone will use virtual currencies.
He realized this situation in Argentina in 2021. At that time, Buterin happened to visit Argentina.
He said that he had made a payment in Ethereum (ETH) at a coffee shop in Tokyo. However, he said, "(The coffee shop) uses virtual currency, but it does not use decentralization technology itself.
"Based on this experience, I thought about what is needed to make blockchain services more popular," he said.
Buterin looked into the reasons why virtual currency payments have not been widely adopted. He said, "When Bitcoin was first released, how many PayPal and Western Union were using it?
"But in reality, Bitcoin's fees have risen to $50. The same goes for Ethereum.
"The fee issue has now been resolved to some extent. Buterin said, "Optimism, Arbitrum-like Ethereum Layer 2 blockchains have appeared,
"Fees have started to come down," he said, "and rollups (a technology to increase the scalability of blockchains) are becoming more and more secure, and are evolving into a stage where they can be used more and more."
In addition to the fee issue, slow transaction speeds have also been an obstacle preventing the widespread use of virtual currencies. Buterin said, "In 2021, I will be using Ethereum to make payments at coffee shops in Argentina.
He also pointed out that speed was an issue, saying, "It took five minutes to send the token." However, he said that this was gradually resolved after the introduction of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559.
The key point of the proposed EIP-1559 is to prevent fees from becoming excessively high by adopting a "basic fee" system.
Buterin explained that the transaction speed has also increased significantly. Although technical issues such as fees and speed have been resolved to some extent, the public is still unaware of virtual currencies and blockchain services.
In response, Buterin said, "The ultimate reason why the public does not use virtual currencies and blockchain technology in the first place is because the technology is not efficient."
"This is because the UX (user experience) of centralized services is better than that of decentralized services, and services like WeChat Pay are easier to use," he said.
In this situation, the way for blockchain services to survive is to satisfy the needs of the masses while at the same time providing the unique benefits that blockchain offers.
Buterin said, "WeChat Pay is convenient, but you can't use it everywhere," and "due to international relations and political situations, it's difficult to use it anywhere."
"There are many countries where such services cannot be used. We need to do more to emphasize that virtual currencies have nothing to do with such political situations."
He also said, "Blockchain is like 'digital concrete.' It is a public ledger and a public network, so it is
"It is a much more robust system than the Internet," he said. Blockchain is unique in that it is censorship-resistant, unaffected by political situations, and has security features that make it less susceptible to hacking.
Buterin said, "We must hold onto these advantages while also accepting the demands of the masses. We will maintain the values of open source and decentralization, while
"We must meet the demands of the public," he said. Examples of this include virtual currency wallets that use multi-sig and social media wallets that use zero-knowledge proof technology.
Buterin said, "Social media that uses zero-knowledge proof technology can prove that users are not robots but "people" and that they are part of a community.
"Sometimes, privacy can be protected," he emphasized. "There is no need to sacrifice decentralization for practicality, or to choose to give up practicality in exchange for decentralization.
"We need to have both decentralization and practicality," he added.
2024/09/19 12:38 KST
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