Vitalik Buterin Says Rollups Can Support Scaling Before ETH 2.0’s Deployment

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, stated in an interview with Tim Ferris that he believed incoming rollups will be able to successfully support the network’s scaling before the deployment of Ethereum 2.0 and the introduction of sharding.

The rollups are layer-2 solutions that bundle transactions using sidechains before submitting them to the mainnet, increasing efficiency and reducing gas fees. This approach has become increasingly popular among Ethereum users as a way to deal with the increasing performance issues.

Ethereum Needs More Power!

The most popular blockchain network among blockchain developers has been struggling in recent months due to congestion which has resulted in high transaction processing times and gas prices, which has allowed other blockchain networks to gain popularity as the “Ethereum killers”.

Buterin expressed that while sharing while greatly increases the throughput of the network, rollups could also increase it by a factor of 100X by themselves, which would be more than enough for the network to continue operating while sharding is implemented.

Projects like Optimism and Arbitrum were mentioned in the interview as potential rollups that could provide the scalability boost over the next few months. However, the adoption of these solutions is all but sure as with every new platform there come risks that developers need to consider, as well as development costs.

Berlin Hard Fork To Be Deployed On April 14

Ethereum’s development team announced on March 8th that the Berlin hard fork was ready to be deployed in the Ropstern testnet on March 10th, while the Mainnet deployment would take place on April 14th.

The Berlin fork will see 4 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) implemented which will be EIP-2565: ModExp Gas Cost, EIP-2929: Gas cost increases for state access opcodes, EIP-2718: Typed Transaction Envelope, and EIP-2930: Optional access lists, 1 less than originally planned on January of 2021.

The hard fork will not affect Ethereum holders in any way but will require node operators and miners to update the Ethereum client to the latest version prior to the fork.

The Berlin update was originally planned to be released back in 2020 but experienced setbacks that prevented its deployment, which resulted in a longer than expected way for Ethereum supporters.

EIP-1559 Passes And Ethereum Gets Ready for ETH Burning

The EIP was originally proposed and co-authored by Vitalik Buterin back in 2019 to allow the reduction of the total ETH supply by burning part of the tokens every time it is used as gas in the network.

This approach has been taken by other blockchain networks to create a deflationary model and incentivize the holding of the cryptocurrency by fomenting scarcity. The proposal will also allow users to know the average price they will pay when doing a transaction, something that has become a guessing game over the last months.

The EIP was motivated not only by the high volatility of transaction-level fees and inefficiencies of first-price auctions but also by the long delays that users experience due to them and the instability it produced on blockchains with no block record.

New Ways to Keep on Top of Market Demand

Originally approved on Friday 5th, the proposal is currently under review and is expected to be deployed over the next months as congestion and fas prices continue to be a concern.

While the proposal and the Berlin hard fork might not resolve all of the issues experienced by users of the Ethereum network, it might alleviate some of the symptoms and allow developers to continued operating on it.

Many devs have turned to networks like Cardano and Polkadot, which have become increasingly popular as their development progresses.

While these platforms may see added users, a few small improvements in the ETH blockchain could once again put it in a secure position near the top of the crypto pantheon.