Vitalik Buterin Worries Ethereum Consensus Is Used For Other Goals

JAKARTA Founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin recently expressed concern that the Ethereum consensus mechanism is being used for purposes that deviate from its original goals.

As is known, in September 2022, Ethereum succeeded in implementing the upgrade of The Merge, where Ethereum switched from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Not without reason Buterin is worried about the Ethereum PoS network.

According to him, if the Ethereum PoS consensus is used for other purposes it will cause a 'high systemic risk' and have a major impact on the Ethereum ecosystem. This should be avoidable and rejected

The reason is that since the last few years, a number of proposals to use the Ethereum network consensus have emerged. Among them are for prices and oracle data, restaking initiatives, the use of soft-fork layer-1 to restore problematic layer-2 projects.

According to Coincu, Buterin assesses the idea of expanding the function of such an Ethereum network has the potential to make the Ethereum network more fragile. In addition, it can pose high risks such as hacking attacks and intentional bugs.

For example, he mentioned the creation of an ETH/USD price oracle, where ETH holders or validators can be bribed to vote, which can have a bad impact if there is a disagreement. Although there is a need for a better oracle, Buterin proposes a case-by-case approach because these various problems are "inherently very different" from each other.