Vitalik Buterin Says Ethereum Must Be Simpler To Keep Its Edge
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the network must become simpler so users don’t have to rely on others to trust the network.
In a Dec. 17 post on X, Buterin suggested that complexity not only slows adoption but can also shift trust to a small group of technically capable users, undermining the network’s decentralized design.
“An important and underrated form of trustlessness is increasing the number of people who can actually understand the whole protocol from top to bottom,” Buterin wrote. “Ethereum needs to get better at this by making the protocol simpler.”
Ethereum currently processes transactions without the interference of a central third party. The network also enforces transactions and smart contracts through open-source software and a decentralized validator set.
But Buterin argues that trustlessness extends beyond code execution and validator decentralization.
Complexity Could Negatively Impact Trustlessness, Buterin Warns
Reducing the complexity for users that want to interact with decentralized applications on the blockchain is an ongoing challenge for developers.
Complexities such as having to pay gas fees, execute transactions using long and complex wallet addresses, and other technical aspects of blockchain technology have been a major roadblock to adoption.
Buterin’s latest argument is that not only does complexity stall the rate of adoption, it could also chip away at blockchain technology’s main draws: decentralization and not having to trust anyone.
More specifically, his argument is that having a system that is so complex that only a select group of people can use it means that users have to rely on that group in practice.
Projects that are building on Ethereum echoed Buterin’s remarks. Among them is INTMAX, a privacy-focused layer-2 network.
“If only five people can understand how your privacy protocol works, you haven’t achieved trustlessness, you’ve just changed who you trust,” the project said in response to Buterin’s post.
“Simple, auditable privacy architecture > complex black boxes,” the project added.
Ethereum Has Acknowledged The Network’s Complexity In Its Roadmap
Ethereum has already started working towards a better user experience for developers and users.
“It is still too complex to use Ethereum for most people,” the team wrote in the Ethereum roadmap. “To encourage mass adoption, Ethereum must drastically lower its barriers to entry – users must get the benefits of decentralized, permissionless and censorship resistant access to Ethereum but it must be as frictionless as using a traditional web2 app.”
Two of the main ways that Ethereum is tackling the current complexity is through simplifying on-chain wallets and making it easier to run nodes on the network.
The team pointed out that current wallets on the blockchain are protected by a pair of keys, namely a private key and a public key.
“This is a different way of operating for people more familiar with banks and Web2 apps which manage accounts on a user’s behalf,” the team said.
To make interacting with on-chain wallets more similar to Web2 experiences, the team has pitched smart contract wallets. They believe that these wallets “create ways to protect accounts if the keys are lost or stolen,” as well as provide better ways to detect and defend against fraud.
While those wallets exist, they are awkward to build because the Ethereum protocol needs to support them better, the team said in its roadmap.
With regards to nodes, the team said that there are several upgrades that will simplify the process of setting up a node and make it a “far less resource-intensive” undertaking. Upgrades such as Verkle Tree storage and statelessness were highlighted as two options.
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