Vitalik Buterin outlines ambitious plans to revolutionize Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently outlined ways to improve the blockchain’s proof-of-stake (PoS) system despite its existing strengths in decentralization and stability.

In a post on Oct. 14, Buterin discussed potential upgrades that could enhance transaction speeds, boost security, and make staking more accessible for solo participants.

Enhancing Ethereum performance

One of Buterin’s primary goals is to reduce Ethereum’s transaction times. Currently, transactions can take up to 15 minutes to finalize, which could lead to network congestion and delays. Buterin aims to cut this down to just a few seconds.

He noted:

“There is value in Ethereum’s transaction confirmation time decreasing further, from 12 seconds down to, e.g. 4 seconds. Doing this would significantly improve the user experience both of the L1 and of based rollups, while making defi protocols more efficient.”

To achieve this, Buterin suggested exploring a “single-slot finality” method, which could drastically reduce transaction times by finalizing blocks within one slot. This approach would make Ethereum more competitive and significantly improve user experience.

Buterin also proposed strategies to accelerate these improvements, including using ZK-SNARKs for better signature aggregation. This could allow Ethereum to process signatures from millions of validators per slot.

Additionally, he introduced the idea of “orbit committees,” which involve the random selection of a medium-sized group responsible for finalizing blocks while maintaining security.

Democratizing staking

Staking accessibility is another key concern. Currently, users need at least 32 ETH (around $81,500) to participate in staking, which limits solo participation. Buterin suggested lowering the threshold to just 1 ETH to encourage more individual users to stake.

Buterin said:

“Poll after poll repeatedly show that the main factor preventing more people from solo staking is the 32 ETH minimum. Reducing the minimum…