Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the distributed Blockchain-calculating platform, Ethereum, has had a lot to say in recent weeks. On April 25, Buterin appeared on The Shitcoin Dot Com Show to discuss the upcoming launch of Ethereum 2.0.

During the interview, Vitalik was asked what people should do with their Ethereum miners one time the network switches from its electric current consensus algorithm to a model where this specialized hardware is no longer required. Currently, Ethereum employs a custom version of Proof-of-Work, called Ethash. This organisation requires vast amounts of calculating resources to validate new blocks on the Ethereum blockchain. An early milestone on Ethereum ii.0's roadmap is a migration to Proof-of-Stake — a competing consensus algorithm that allows users to validate blocks using their own accumulated wealth on the network.

In response to how he'd like to see obsolete mining hardware used, Vitalik revealed:

"This is definitely non going to become 100% of the miners, you might go a few percent at most, but: Zero Knowledge Proofs."

The power of sharing proof without cognition

Zero Knowledge Proofs, or ZKPs, are an information sharing protocol. They permit 2 parties to share with each other that they know a piece of information, without really revealing what the information is.

In the context of Blockchain technology, zero proof transactions are useful for users who wish to maintain a higher level of anonymity. Projects similar Zcash employ a unique iteration of ZKPs, called zk-SNARKS, that permit users to send fully encrypted transactions natively, while remaining verifiable nether the network's consensus rules.

Buterin, who has often been song about his dear for ZKPs, went on to say that there has been, "this kind of huge, quiet applied science revolution happening with zero-knowledge proofs," going on to elaborate that:

"They're very powerful. Kickoff of all, they give you a lot of privacy. 2nd they give you a lot of scalability, considering instead of verifying a really big thing, you just accept to verify a really pocket-sized proof. You tin use them to verify the validity of things, you could potentially use them to supercede Merkle trees; cut the Merkle tree branches and witnesses down from hundreds of kilobytes to like a couple of kilobytes, and all of these squeamish things."

Exciting times in Ethereumland

Discussing what Vitalik refers to equally "Ethereumland", the 26 twelvemonth-quondam programmer appeared to have trivial apprehension when it comes to the Ethereum network's most significant update since information technology'due south original launch in 2022. He admitted:

"Information technology's definitely a scrap less nerve-racking than the first time, just because I've been through the whole affair earlier. Definitely nervous with anticipation, but also just very excited to run across all of this stuff finally become live."

Calculation:

"It'due south important to remember that upwardly until very recently, ETH two.0 was basically an idea and a dream, every bit far every bit most people could tell."

While Ethereum 2.0'southward release date has not yet been announced, Prysmatic Labs publicly launched the first ETH2.0 test net, called Topaz, on Apr 18. Speaking candidly well-nigh the occasion, Vitalik admitted "Information technology's definitely a large milestone for us."