In recent comments regarding the future of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin emphasized a significant strategic shift for the network. He argues that the focus should be on increasing the network’s bandwidth, which refers to the capacity to handle data, rather than simply reducing latency or transaction processing speed.

His main point revolves around distinguishing the feasible from the physically impossible. He notes that efforts to reduce latency are inherently limited by the speed of light:

“We are fundamentally constrained by the speed of light, and on top of that we are also constrained by […] need to support nodes in rural environments, worldwide, and in home or commercial environments outside of data centers, need to support censorship-resistance and anonymity for nodes, etc… [Quote shortened for editorial purposes].”

To illustrate this concept more clearly, Buterin presents an analogy:

The Highway Analogy: Bandwidth vs. Latency

Imagine Ethereum as a highway with the challenge being traffic-related – the goal is to transport more individuals effectively. There are essentially two approaches to this:

1. Reduce latency (speed) of transportation by enabling every car to drive significantly faster.
2. Increase bandwidth (capacity) of the highway by constructing additional lanes.

Buterin advocates for the second approach, stating that enhancing transportation speed could introduce dangers and is fundamentally limited. This line of thinking ties back to a previous discussion he had five years ago, titled The Limits to Blockchain Scalability, where he reflected on a statement made by Elon Musk.

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“Ideally, Doge speeds up block time 10X, increases block size 10X & drops fee 100X. Then it wins hands down.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 16, 2021

Buterin pointed out that addressing latency is possible with existing technologies without compromising security and decentralization. Potential methods include:

• Improvements in P2P technology, especially erasure coding, to lower message propagation times without reducing individual node bandwidth.
• Implementing a chain with fewer nodes per slot (e.g., 512 instead of 30,000) could eliminate the need for aggregation, permitting all critical operations to occur within one subnet.

According to Buterin, implementing these methods could increase Ethereum’s efficiency by three to six times.

The World Heartbeat

This technical divergence delineates Ethereum’s ultimate goal – to be a World’s Heartbeat rather than merely a World’s Video Game Server. He asserts that scaling is achievable with current technologies such as PeerDAS and ZKPs, allowing Ethereum to scale significantly beyond its current limitations. He also mentioned that the possibility exists to combine large-scale operations with decentralization.

However, there may come a time where certain applications necessitate faster processing speeds than what Ethereum can provide. In such circumstances, Buterin believes that these applications should incorporate off-chain components, thereby emphasizing the ongoing relevance of layer two scaling solutions even as Ethereum improves its scalability.