Node centralization is one of the key problems of Ethereum, but the ideal solution may appear in 10-20 years. Such terms were announced by the co-founder of the platform Vitalik Buterin, writes Cointelegraph.
According to him, the solution is to make it cheaper and easier to maintain nodes.
According to Ethernodes, 59.7% of the 5,901 active nodes on the blockchain of the second largest cryptocurrency by capitalization run on Amazon Web Services. Another 6.1% comes from Google Cloud, 5.7% from Hetzner Online.
According to observers, this ratio makes Ethereum vulnerable to a centralized point of failure.
Speaking at Korea Blockchain Week, Buterin outlined six key challenges that need to be addressed in order to solve the problem of centralization.
The node issue is a “big piece of the puzzle” for Ethereum decentralization in the long run, he stressed. The latter requires the use of statelessness technology (non-fixed state), Buterin added.
“Today, running a node requires hundreds of gigabytes of data. With statelessness-clients, you can implement this almost from scratch”, explained the co-founder of Ethereum.
The concept is to remove the dependency on centralized service providers to check for activity on the network.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, true decentralization is not possible until node operators can run software on modest and inexpensive hardware. Statelessness is a key component of the project’s roadmap, with deployments in The Verge and The Purge phases.
Buterin doubted the possibility of overcoming purely technical limitations in the near future. He suggested that this would happen in 10 or even 20 years.
In addition to achieving statelessness, additional requirements for reducing centralization will be:
- simplification of documentation;
- reducing barriers to decentralized staking;
- providing greater security and convenience.
The Ethereum co-founder acknowledged achieving higher levels of scalability is currently more pressing than reducing the degree of decentralization.
Recall that in June, Buterin published a roadmap in which he noted the main directions for the sustainable development of the blockchain – L2-scaling, strengthening the security of wallets and data privacy.
In a previous version of the paper, the Ethereum co-founder focused on scaling with zk-Rollups.
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