Vitalik Buterin Talks About Ethereum Development: Return to Basics, Steady Progress

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shared his views on the current state of the cryptocurrency industry and insights on the future development direction of Ethereum in an interview.

Current Status of the Crypto Industry: Returning to Rationality

Vitalik believes that the current bear market environment provides the crypto industry with an opportunity to return to its roots. He stated that the past year has attracted a lot of attention to the crypto space, but it has also brought some negative effects:

• The industry's excessive commitments have led to overly high public expectations.
• Attracted some bad elements
• Attract additional attention from regulatory agencies

He believes that now is a good time for the crypto industry to refocus and prepare for the next round of development.

Technological Development: Steadily Moving Forward

Speaking of technological advancements, Vitalik pointed out that blockchain scalability still has shortcomings, but significant progress has been made, such as the development of Rollups, sharding, ZK-Rollups, and other technologies. He mentioned that some of the technologies he previously emphasized are gradually gaining attention and being implemented, such as the Optimism and Arbitrum projects.

Regarding the development speed of Ethereum, Vitalik believes there are two opposing forces: on one hand, the community continues to attract excellent talent, accelerating development; on the other hand, there is a need to be cautious and avoid mistakes, which requires slowing down. He believes this balance is healthy and will help Ethereum accelerate its development in the coming years while maintaining stability.

The Merge: Not Fully Priced by the Market

Regarding the upcoming The Merge (Ethereum merge upgrade), Vitalik stated that the developers are in high spirits. He believes that from a psychological and narrative perspective, The Merge has not been fully priced in by the market. He anticipates that once the merger actually occurs, it will further boost community morale, and at that time, Ether will truly be re-evaluated by the market.

Warning on DeFi and High-Yield Projects

Vitalik expressed concerns about some recent high-yield DeFi projects. He pointed out that any project with an annual yield exceeding 10% is either unsustainable or potentially a scam. He cited the collapse of Terra as an example, emphasizing the importance of returning to fundamentals, and expressed a hope that such projects would collapse sooner to reduce larger-scale losses.

Expectations for the Community

Vitalik encourages community members to focus on building meaningful projects. He cited the ERC-4337 account abstraction proposal as an example, praising its development team for not issuing tokens or engaging in hype, but rather for their commitment to improving wallet security and L2 performance. He suggested that project teams should focus on how to solve real problems, rather than just concentrating on token issuance.

Finally, Vitalik stated that as a member of the community, he is willing to listen and provide help and encouragement for valuable projects as much as possible.