Ethereum is only 40% finished and after merge 55%, says Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum (ETH), talked about the long-term future of Ethereum at the EthCC event on July 21. Here he indicated that Ethereum is only 40% complete at the moment. He compares this with the Bitcoin (BTC) network:

“The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoiners consider Bitcoin to be 80% complete, but Ethereans consider Ethereum to be 40% complete.”

According to Buterin, there are five different phases to the development of Ethereum: the mergeof surgeof vergeof purge and the splurge.

The merge will probably be performed in September. This update makes Ethereum move to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model, as opposed to the old proof-of-work (PoW) model. The surge is about implementing sharding, that is splitting the blockchain for faster transactions. The verge is about so-called get dressed. The purge is mainly aimed at validators. They need to use less hard drive space against that. Finally, the splurge takes care of “all the other fun stuff,” Buterin says.

Ethereum 55% off after merge

Vitalik believes that when the merge phase is complete, Ethereum will be 55% complete. The next phase is the sharding phase. This phase should ensure that the Ethereum network can process up to 100,000 transactions per second (TPS). This phase should be completed sometime in 2023.

After that, Ethereum will work on the verge update. Buterin expects this phase to be completed in late 2023 or early 2024. Buterin also says that it is important for Ethereum’s long term that the project becomes more efficient, but not more complex.

A simpler and more compact version of Ethereum may require someone to know the entire protocol well, Buterin says. However, he admits that this is currently quite tricky. Currently, many developers indicate that the “It’s okay if no one understands the whole protocol, since we can specialize in different parts.” However, this mindset is not in line with Buterin’s vision of the future of Ethereum.

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