Vitalik On Ethereum: “Right Now It Can Process 15 Transactions Per Second. Really, We Need 100,000”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has said that the Ethereum network needs to process 100,000 transactions per second to be a viable platform in the future.

In an interview with Abra CEO Bill Barhydt, Buterin shared Ethereum’s top 3 development priorities:

As far as the big problems, my top three at this point are probably scalability, privacy and usability. So scalability – the Ethereum blockchain right now can process 15 transactions per second. Really, we need 100,000.

Explaining how Ethereum’s developers are tackling the problem of scalability, he said:

There are two major kinds of strategies that we’re working on for scalability. One is layer-one scaling and the other is layer-two scaling…And our solution to this, called sharding, basically means that you split up the different transactions to randomly selected, different groups of computers…And that can increase scalability by maybe a factor of 1,000 or so, but then potentially even more, much later down the road.

He also expressed his opinion on how Bitcoin would do well as a store of value, but suggested that switching to Proof-of-Stake would be better if its intention is to act as a currency:

If Bitcoin wishes to just be a store of value, then realistically it’s probably fine, though I think they should switch to proof-of-stake. If they want to actually be a currency that people use for transactions, then I do think base-layer scaling, and also speeding up the blockchain and reducing block times at the base layer, is also something which is very important.

Buterin recently offered an update on “Ethereum 2.0”, a highly anticipated update to the Ethereum network that will bring sharding and the Casper protocol. The update will switch the network to a Proof-of-Stake system, and bring increased efficiency in transaction processing.

As far as scaling solutions go, Buterin has said that several options are being considered across the development community:

For all the scalability issues, efficiency issues that people have, there are generally multiple efforts that are flying under the radar to improve that.

Casper and sharding have been delayed until 2021, though it could arrive sometime before then. Ethereum 2.0, called Serenity, is yet to even enter its first phase of integration, of which there are three.