The original goals of Web3, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have “faded somewhat into the background,” with many initiatives moving away from the central concept of decentralization.
Buterin noted that there is a big ideological divide “where significant parts of the non-blockchain decentralization community see the crypto world as a distraction, and not as a kindred spirit and a powerful ally” in a blog post titled “Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again” that was published today.
He mentioned that Gavin Wood, a cofounder of Ethereum, was the one who first created the term “Web3.” “Gavin thought about it more broadly as one of a set of technologies that could together form the base layer of a more open internet stack, as opposed to seeing it, as I did, as ‘Bitcoin plus smart contracts.”
Although Buterin noted that many nations use cryptocurrencies for money transfers and savings, these transactions are frequently made via centralized channels, “either through internal transfers on centralized exchange accounts or by trading USDT on Tron.”
An increase in transaction costs
However, Buterin noted that the increase in transaction fees is the “number one culprit” he would hold responsible for the move.
He wrote, “You could imagine people making all kinds of applications that use blockchains in various ways, including non-financial ways, when the cost of writing to the chain is $0.001, or even $0.1.”
However, he continued, “degen gamblers” would either continue to be willing to play or would even grow more so if transaction fees exceeded $100.
He claimed that when degen gamblers, who are frequently viewed as high-risk traders, surpass all other users of the chain in terms of volume, “this adjusts the public perception and the crypto space’s internal culture.”
favorable advancements
Buterin listed the good things that Ethereum will be doing in 2023 in addition to pointing out the problems that the community is currently facing. He said that there may be potential for a resurgence of the decentralized ethos due to developments in scalability solutions like rollups, second-generation privacy solutions, and the appearance of account abstraction and light clients.
According to Buterin, there is a growing realization that cryptocurrency cannot be about unbridled centralization and excessive financialization. Buterin stated that “together we present us with an opportunity to take things in a different direction” because of this growing realization and the important technologies already discussed.
Proofs requiring no prior knowledge
Buterin claims that zero-knowledge proofs and their growing developer-friendliness present new opportunities for consumer apps and privacy-preserving technologies.
In the future, Buterin sees Ethereum serving as a central location for a variety of applications, such as safe, anonymous voting systems and decentralized social media.
He went on, “These technologies are most commonly used as ZK rollups to improve Ethereum’s scalability, but they are also very useful for privacy.”
He said, “In particular, we can get past the false binary of ‘anonymous but risky’ vs ‘KYC’d therefore safe,’ and get privacy and many kinds of authentication and verification at the same time.'” This is made possible by the programmability of zero-knowledge proofs.
Reiterating fundamental principles
The essential values of Ethereum, according to Buterin, are auditability, credible neutrality, open global participation, decentralization, resilience to censorship, cooperative thinking, and tool development.
“Within the cryptocurrency ecosystem, it is very possible to build things that do not adhere to these values,” he stated. “With no intention of ever switching to something more secure, one can build a system that one calls a ‘layer 2,’ but which is actually a highly centralized system secured by a multisig.”
It’s difficult to resist these demands, However, if we don’t, we run the risk of losing the distinctive value of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and producing a web2 ecosystem clone that has more processes and inefficiencies,” he continued.
