Rewritten Title: Ethereum Founder Talks About Ethereum Development: POS, Layer 2, and the Future

Recently, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin gave a Chinese interview in Hong Kong, expressing his views on the current state and future direction of Ethereum's development. Here are the main points from the interview:

About the POS Consensus Mechanism

Vitalik believes that Ethereum has been running stably after the transition to POS, with a large number of validators; however, the decline in ETH price is unrelated to the consensus mechanism. He stated that the value of ETH depends on the applications within the Ethereum ecosystem and that it is necessary to support those applications that can bring long-term value to ETH holders.

About PBS Architecture

Regarding the PBS architecture of Ethereum 2.0, Vitalik stated that this is a complex philosophical issue. He believes that block construction and validation can become asymmetric, with increased difficulty in construction but reduced difficulty in validation. Although some super nodes may emerge, their power can be constrained through technical means to ensure the decentralization and security of the network.

The Relationship Between Layer 1 and Layer 2

Vitalik pointed out that the current Layer 2 faces issues such as slow security progress and insufficient cross-chain interoperability. He believes that Layer 1 needs to take on more roles to ensure the value of ETH. He mentioned several solutions to enhance the scalability of Layer 1, hoping to increase the Gas limit of Layer 1 by 10 times by 2026.

Ethereum Future Upgrade Plans

Vitalik revealed that Ethereum will undergo the Pectra upgrade at the end of this month, with the Fusaka upgrade planned for the third or fourth quarter. He stated that efforts are being made to improve coordination efficiency and shorten the upgrade cycle.

Views on Cryptography and AI

Vitalik believes that the combination of cryptographic technologies such as ZK, MPC, and FHE has great potential, but there are also some security concerns. Regarding AI, he thinks it has a democratizing effect and can narrow the gap between experts and novices.

Suggestions for Ethereum Developers

Vitalik encourages developers to take advantage of the current opportunity to create applications with real value and sustainable business models, avoiding two extremes: being overly idealistic but unused, or purely speculative applications. He believes now is a good time to develop Ethereum applications.