Ethereum creator examines own crypto forecasts of the last few years
Buterin mistook proof-of-stake and sharding
Complexity of software development underestimated – today more emphasis is placed on simplicity
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is often very honest and, if necessary, puts his finger in the wound when there are problems in his own network. For example, Buterin explained on the Bankless podcast in early January that Ethereum in its current form is not suitable for the mass market – the processing speed is not sufficient and the fees are too high. He also dampened expectations that this could be achieved by switching to proof-of-stake.
The Ethereum inventor is just as honest and self-critical with himself. At the beginning of January, Buterin looked back in a number of Twitter posts on his own statements about the crypto market over the past few years and also admitted quite honestly when he here and there with his forecasts were wrong.
Proof of Stake and Ethereum 2.0
In one of his Twitter posts, Buterin also took a look at some of his 2015 predictions regarding the introduction of proof-of-stake and sharding, another element important to Ethereum 2.0. – Trade bitcoin with Plus 500 – how it works. 72% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should carefully consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. – At that time, Buterin assumed that the introduction of these elements could take place as early as 2016. The Ethereum co-founder admitted that he was “very wrong” with these predictions – they were downright ridiculous.
3. My projections from 2015 of when we will get PoS and sharding. Honestly, these were very wrong and worth laughing at; I’ll share a screenshot of one of my presentations from 2015 so everyone can laugh more easily. pic.twitter.com/6tbsmajJyu
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022
The switch to the proof-of-stake mechanism is now planned for the first half of 2022, while according to t3n it should take at least until the end of the year for the introduction of sharding.
Complexity underestimated – Learning for development teams
The Ethereum founder admits in one of his Twitter posts that one of his mistakes was to deeply underestimate the complexity of software development and the difference between a Python Proof of Capacity (PoC) and a proper production implementation at the time. From today’s perspective, Buterin considers ideas such as “12-dimensional hypercubes” from the era of 2014 to be much too complex.
But what was my core underlying mistake? IMO it’s that I deeply underestimated the complexity of software development, and the diff between a python PoC and a proper production impl. 2014-era ideas were waaay too complex, eg. “12-dimensional hypercubes”:https://t.co/MIKWiowHrB pic.twitter.com/0FNf6BY9sE
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022
Nowadays, the development team places much more emphasis on simplicity, “both the simplicity of the final design and the simplicity of the path to get there,” Buterin said on Twitter. There is now “more appreciation for pragmatic compromises.”
Some predictions are correct
However, Buterin also stated that he correctly predicted some other developments. There are some correct predictions in the 2013 Ethereum white paper.
A lot correct (basically predicted “defi”), though incentivized file storage + compute hasn’t taken off that much (yet?), and of course I completely missed NFTs.
I would say the biggest thing I missed in the details is collusion issues in DAO governance: https://t.co/cezOk10KQ0
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2022
It “basically predicted ‘defi'”. However, he completely missed the area of NFTs.
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