Vitalik Buterin talks about Ethereum’s “unchosen road”: The biggest challenge comes from balancing the two visions

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a blog post this week titled “The Road Not Taken,” discussing ETH premine, proof-of-stake, and the evolution of the most used blockchain.

Buterin wrote that Ethereum could have been less complex. Its virtual machine could have used existing code rather than a custom solution. Its developers could have used the original version of proof-of-stake (PoS) that existed in 2013. Ethereum could have been "more like Bitcoin." He wrote, "Overall, I sometimes feel that Ethereum's biggest challenge comes from the balance between two visions - a pure and simple blockchain that values ​​security and simplicity, and a performant and functional platform for building advanced applications."

V God said his personal dream is to try to achieve these two visions at the same time: a base layer where the specification is smaller every year than the previous year; a strong developer-friendly advanced application ecosystem centered on the second layer protocol. It will take a long time to achieve such an ideal world, and a clearer understanding that it will take time and we need to think about the roadmap step by step may help us a lot. V God believes that there is a path to achieve improved functionality and simplicity, although it may be tortuous.

Ethereum was originally intended to be a "world computer," or decentralized platform, powered by cryptocurrency to execute any conceivable application. Today, Ethereum supports a multi-billion dollar economy, has attracted some of the world's brightest computer scientists, and is the source of many novel computer "primitives" that have surfaced.

This balancing act between elegant design and complexity is complicated by the fact that Ethereum is an open network that exists to allow anyone with an idea and enough capital to build their dream app or make a quick buck.

Ethereum is often criticized in the crypto industry, especially by Bitcoin enthusiasts. Of course, there are some individuals and organizations that have influence on Ethereum, but the network can be described as democratic.

Earlier this month, Time magazine published a cover story about Buterin, in which he said he would take a more explicit leadership role in the future. Buterin said: "One of the decisions I made in 2022 was to try to take more risk and be less neutral. I would rather Ethereum offend some people than become something meaningless."

The Time magazine NFT with Vitalik Buterin on the cover has been launched on Ethereum and has been listed on OpenSea after the airdrop. This is the first decentralized magazine issued in the form of NFT, and NFT holders can read the entire magazine through interaction.

Buterin is now skeptical of many decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), where the presence of venture capitalists and self-interested actors has become the “de facto standard” and token voting has become an alternative to plutocracy.

Some of this is a natural result of Ethereum’s “Premine,” which Buterin categorizes in his post as “not credibly neutral.” He wrote that about 12 million ETH (about 10% of the current total supply) was allocated to the Ethereum Foundation and “about 100 early [protocol] contributors,” adding that “some of the recipient addresses were carefully selected through an undisclosed process” and that “the Premine over-rewarded early contributors and left too little for later contributors.”

V God wrote at the end of the article, “Today, there are many things we cannot change, but there are still many things we can change, and there is still a way to fully improve functionality and simplicity. Sometimes the path is tortuous: we need to add some complexity first to enable sharding, which in turn enables a lot of Layer2 scalability on top. That is to say, it is possible to reduce complexity, and the history of Ethereum has proved this.”