Vitalik Reflects on the Early Design of Ethereum: Five Regrets and Future Outlook

At the Ethereum event held in Berlin, it was unexpected that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin took the stage to share his reflections on the early design of Ethereum. His remarks not only reminded the audience of the glorious moments at the birth of Ethereum but also outlined a new blueprint for the future development of this cryptocurrency, which currently has a market value of $448 billion.

With the gradual clarification of the regulatory environment and the participation of mainstream financial institutions, Ethereum is ushering in new development opportunities. It has become synonymous with decentralized finance, nurturing a vast ecosystem valued at over $63 billion. However, Vitalik pointed out that despite the increasing popularity of Ethereum, there are still misconceptions about it among the public. He said: "The positioning of Bitcoin is very simple, it's digital gold. But when it comes to Ethereum, people often ask 'What exactly is Ethereum?'"

In answering the question of how to rebuild Ethereum, Vitalik raised five main regrets:

1. Excessive virtual machine bitness: The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) uses 256-bit processing instead of the more common 64-bit or 32-bit. This leads to inefficiencies and unnecessary data redundancy on the blockchain.

2. Complexity of smart contracts: Early developers should focus more on simplifying the writing process of smart contracts, reducing the number of lines of code to improve transparency and auditability.

3. Timing of consensus mechanism transition: Vitalik believes that Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) should have occurred earlier. He stated that even a less-than-perfect version of PoS could have made a significant contribution to environmental protection as early as 2018.

4. The absence of automatic logging features: Some important logging functions have been overlooked during the development of Ethereum, especially in the transition to smart wallets. Vitalik stated that this could have been easily implemented in the early stages of the project.

5. Cryptographic Algorithm Selection: Vitalik stated that if he had to choose again, he would use SHA-2 instead of Keccak as the cryptographic algorithm for Ethereum. The non-standard version of Keccak currently in use has led to compatibility issues with other systems.

Despite these design flaws, Vitalik remains confident about the future of Ethereum. He praised the core development team's continuously improving execution capabilities and believes that the team is capable of effectively and safely correcting these early mistakes.

This reflection not only showcases Vitalik's foresight but also reflects the Ethereum community's commitment to continuous improvement and innovation. With ongoing technological advancements and the expansion of the ecosystem, Ethereum is expected to maintain its leading position in the future blockchain and decentralized applications space.