Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has published a blog post with proposed solutions that could potentially help deal with the network’s high validator count.
The high numbers prop decentralization and allow even amateur investors to participate in staking. But on the negative side, the big number of signatures being processed cause a bottleneck in the network.
And in Buterin’s view, the overload is currently too high and needs to be dealt with.
The system’s current signature aggregation system is currently processing approximately 28,000 signatures per slot.
In the blog, Vitalik Buterin said that, “It seems infeasible to make an everyone-signs-in-every-slot system truly enable staking for the average person in the long term…”. He added that if for example Ethereum has 500 million users, and 10% of that number stakes, that adds up to 100 million signatures per slot.
An Ethereum slot refers to a specified period of time inside the network. 12 seconds are afforded to the network to randomly pick a validator to propose a block to the slot.
Buterin thinks that sticking to 8,192 signatures, as opposed to the current number of 28,000 signatures per slot, would help lessen the technical issues that the Ethereum network is currently wrestling with.
Buterin’s Three Proposed Solutions
Buterin’s first proposed solution is going all in on decentralized staking pools. For this move to work, it would require increasing the minimum deposit size to 4,096 ETH. This would in turn lure investors with small stakes to join these pools.
Buterin’s second approach is to have two layers of stakes. The first a heavy layer with the proposed 4.096 stakes which participates in finality. The second layer would be lighter and would have no minimum stake, offering an additional wall of security.
Vitalik’s third and final solution is rotating communities. The communities would be picked from the existing group of active validators. It would be adjusted weekly to ensure it is secure.
It is now up to the Ethereum community to consider which of the three proposals will be implemented.
