‘If You Like PoW, Use Ethereum Classic,’ Says Vitalik Buterin

At the fifth edition of the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris on July 21, 2022, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin presented his outlook for the long-term future of the second-largest blockchain project.

Buterin first noted that Ethereum was undergoing a long and complicated transition toward becoming a much more robust and powerful system, and completing it involved deep changes. These include the Merge, a change in the existing monetary policy, the transaction inclusion process, the security model and more.

Buterin believes the network will be 55% complete by the end of the Merge or transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. He said so, referring to the common argument in the Bitcoin (BTC) community that Bitcoin is 80% complete.

Commenting on the merits of PoS, Buterin admitted that transitioning to it is a big change with lots of benefits. And for the few remaining proof-of-work (PoW) supporters in the Ethereum community, he advised them to use Ethereum Classic (ETC) instead. “They have a welcoming community [and] a totally fine chain,” he concluded.

The full speech is available on YouTube:

In terms of changes worth making in the future, Buterin suggested upgrades for quantum resistance. In his words: “Once quantum computers come, we have to upgrade to different cryptography.”

Additionally, the Ethereum co-founder said the network would over time settle from the rate of change:

At some point, the rate of change for the protocol will have to slow down. And Ethereum will then look somewhat more like a system that optimizes for safety and predictability, and less like an ecosystem that optimizes for impressing and dazzling people.