Vitalik Buterin flags the human factor as the main barrier to Proof-of-Stake

Disagreements among team members had a greater impact on the timelines for both the first and second versions of the protocol than technical problems. Buterin said at the Virtual Fintech Forum, Forkast reports.

Buterin had expected that deploying ETH1 would take three months, which ultimately stretched to 18 months.

We thought that the transition to Proof-of-Stake would take a year, but in reality it took six years. If you are tackling a complex problem, you may need more time than you expect, he added.

According to the roadmap Ethereum 2.0, the merge with the first version of the protocol is expected by late 2021–early 2022. A year later, ETH2, through the combination of Rollups and sharding, is expected to reach a level of scalability that will meet the needs of applications used by leading corporations.

Buterin explained that active development of layer-two solutions ultimately shifted priority toward the merge of ETH1 and ETH2, with subsequent work on sharding. The original concept envisaged the opposite sequence.

Buterin noted that Ethereum has become a victim of its own success — high demand has driven fees to record highs, making transactions economically unviable for the ‘average’ user. He linked this to the rise of ‘extremely valuable’ stablecoins.

The Ethereum co-founder forecast a further evolution of the decentralized finance sector, including through synthetic assets.

DeFi-enabled functionality and programmability will provide tools to do much more interesting things, he explained.

Buterin noted that the problems facing competing blockchains lie in the ongoing evolution of Ethereum itself and the layer-two solutions built atop it.

Earlier, Ethereum co-founder doubted Bitcoin’s dominance without increasing the energy efficiency of its mining.

According to developer Karl Bihzeizen’s forecasts, after Ethereum abandons Proof-of-Work, energy costs to sustain the network could be reduced by as much as 2000-fold.

In early June, the amount of funds locked in the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract reached 5.21 million ETH ($13.59 billion at the time).

Follow ForkLog on Twitter!