Péter Szilágyi, team leader at the Ethereum Foundation and developer of this network, expressed his doubts on social networks about the direction of the blockchain and the constant changes it has experienced. “It is not going in a clear direction,” he assured, and highlighted the complexity of the protocol as one of its main handicaps.
Although it seems that Ethereum is coming to The Merge in a good way, the direction pursued by the advances of this chain of blocks is not very clear, according to what was expressed by this developer on his Twitter profile, where he has more than 47,000 followers. The Merge phase refers to the merger, an instance in which the network will begin the transition to the new version of Ethereum 2.0.
“Tangentially, Ethereum is seeing results, but also gaining difficulty like there is no tomorrow,” he wrote in a thread in the social network. So, says Szilágyi, “if the protocol isn’t simplified a little bit, it’s not going to make it.”
In the view of this specialist, complexity is an aspect that is often not taken into account because it is someone else who “pays the price” for it, and not the person who creates it. With “pay the price” he talks about time, money and effort, among other things.
In the case of Ethereum, the expert stated that researchers imagine elegant things, but very difficult to put into practice by developers. The latter, whom Szilagyi has also defended in other of his tweets, they must “juggle” these ideas and manipulate them carefully to expand the network. This, he assures, may not be possible forever and there could be a “tipping point” from which there is no return.
Where does the complexity of Ethereum that Szilágyi talks about come from?
The Ethereum network has an instrument called Ethereum Improvement Proposal, Ethereum Improvement Proposal or simply EIP. These are ideas that are evaluated in the community to change something in the blockchain that improves its operation, or to add new features to it.
According to Szilágyi’s view, never in the history of Ethereum has an EIP had the purpose of reducing the complexity of the protocol, If not the opposite. Although each proposal claims to “have everything figured out”, big changes only add more difficulty to the network and their implementation demands a lot of effort from miners.
With this, a point has been reached where no one can have a complete image of the system. “That’s bad,” he maintains, and it could lead to a point where no one could fix eventual network failures.
What do you propose in this scenario? “I don’t know what the solution is, but I think we should stop adding features and start sacrificing some, even at the cost of breaking things.” In addition, he added that “there are less and less people who know and want to join a broken network, and each change brings us closer to that.”
Ethereum, between what it was and what it is becoming
Szilágyi’s views are consistent with an aspect of the Ethereum network that can be seen in its historical evolution: it tends to change a lot without a fixed course.
This can be seen, for example, in its monetary issue. Since the birth of the network, this parameter had no limit, that is, an unlimited number of ethers (ETH), the Ethereum token, could be issued.
Although this issuance remains unlimited, since the introduction of the EIP-1559 which establishes the burning of a percentage of the commissions that are paid in each transaction, Ethereum is intended to be deflationary. As ether is a decreasing asset, its value would be expected to rise as long as the demand is maintained over time.
As CriptoNoticias reported, this could take years to come to pass, as the point should be reached where tokens burned are more than tokens issued. In mid-2021, when the London update that introduced EIP-1559 was activated, almost ten times more ETH was being issued than was being burned.
On the other hand, Ethereum also plans to change its consensus algorithm, that is, the way in which transactions are validated. With the arrival of Ethereum 2.0, now expected by the end of 2022, the network will change from a model with proof of work or proof of work—in other words, mining—a Proof-of-Stake or proof of participation.
Finally, several other protocol changes and updates that have resulted in major changes to the network, such as changing miner fees and rewards and improvements to enhance network security. While these are alterations that may have improved Ethereum in several ways, they contribute to the complexity theory that Szilágyi is warning about before it is too late.