Buterin outlines next steps for Ethereum’s proof-of-stake evolution

Ethereum’s Buterin has unveiled plans to enhance the network’s consensus model, focusing on single-slot finality, staking accessibility, and increased validator participation.

Despite the successful completion of the Merge — an essential upgrade that transitioned Ethereum‘s consensus algorithm from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake — the network’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin notes that there are still remain “some important areas in which proof-of-stake needs to improve.”

In a Monday blog post, Oct. 14, Buterin emphasized that critical improvements are still necessary to mitigate centralization risks and enhance overall functionality. The roadmap distinguishes between technical improvements — such as stability and accessibility for validators — and economic changes aimed at addressing centralization.

One major area highlighted is the desire for single-slot finality, which would reduce the current block finalization time from 15 minutes to just 12 seconds (or even four seconds), a change that would “significantly improve the user experience both of the layer-1 and of based rollups, while making decentralized finance protocols more efficient.”

Another pressing concern is staking democratization. Currently, a minimum of 32 ETH (around $81,500 at current prices) is required to participate in staking, a serious limitation, to which Buterin suggested lowering the threshold down to 1 ETH in an effort to increase solo staking participation.

“Poll after poll repeatedly show that the main factor preventing more people from solo staking is the 32 ETH minimum. Reducing the minimum to 1 ETH would solve this issue, to the point where other concerns become the dominant factor limiting solo staking.”

Vitalik Buterin

To achieve these enhancements, Buterin outlined several strategies. One proposed solution, referred to as “brute force,” involves improving signature aggregation through the potential use ZK-SNARKs, enabling the processing of signatures from millions of validators within each slot.

Additionally, he introduced the concept of “orbit committees,” which would involve randomly selected medium-sized committees tasked with finalizing the chain while maintaining robust security features.

For the staking challenges, Buterin suggested a “two-tiered staking” model, which would allow for two classes of stakers — one with higher deposit requirements and another with lower, an approach that would create a more inclusive environment for participants while ensuring economic finality.

While the timeline for implementing these proposals remains uncertain, Buterin emphasized the necessity of continued development to strike a balance between simplicity and functionality, reiterating the importance of identifying a protocol that is “sufficiently simple that we are comfortable implementing it on mainnet.”