Vitalik Buterin maps Ethereum’s shift beyond a blockchain in sweeping 2030 vision
Buterin wants Ethereum to do far more work without forcing every computer on the network to repeat the same calculations.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Sunday that the network he envisions for 2030 may still be called a blockchain, but it would work very differently from today’s version.
In a post titled “The cryptographic world computer,” Buterin described a system combining a blockchain with cryptographic proofs and networks of computers working outside it. The plan through 2030 would change both how much Ethereum can do and what users can independently verify.
Ethereum already lets people send money, trade tokens and borrow through applications that run according to shared rules. The difficulty is making those applications serve more people without making the network too expensive to use or too demanding to check.
Computers could then work on different tasks at the same time, giving Ethereum more capacity as well as more independent checks.