The primary view of the markets suggests an evolution of Ethereum as an exclusive layer for financial settlements. However, Vitalik Buterin doesn’t agree with the narration and sticks to the ‘world computer’ idea.
As reported yesterday on CoinGape, the top applications on Ethereum are all DeFi-based. Today, leading crypto analyst and partner at Castle Island Ventures, Nic Carter, expresses similar views on the future of the network
Simply put, fees are of immense importance to a blockchain with a capped supply. Otherwise, in case of uncapped supply, the users must “rely on perpetual inflation to finance security or fall back to permissioned validators” In a growing economy, inflation is a positive characteristic feature which provides the room for further growth. Hence. the validators’ and users’ motivation will lie either on the rewards from mining (eventually fees) or inflation.
Therefore, the prospect of building a blockchain empowering the world computer presents a paradoxical situation for Ethereum. However, Vitalik points out that it is only a short phase. He says,
No one is “embracing” high per-transaction fees. There’s certainly happiness about *total* fees being high, but that’s not the same as being ok with per-transaction fees being high.
The issue that Carter is presenting seems to take a pragmatic view of the situation. But Vitalik holds onto his vision. He says,Advertisement
I think my main disagreement with your (Nic Carter) positioning is just that I don’t think the ethereum community has to the slightest extent abandoned the dream of supporting non-financial apps with affordable fees.
With the help of roll-ups, shards and plasma on Ethereum 2.0 the foundation envision to support all a variety of low fees based transactions. However, the apprehensions around its’ security and scalability is still a viable concern.
Ethereum 2.0 Update
Out of the four elaborate phases of launch, only the test-net of the first phase is active as out of yet. The Medella Testnet launch was the most recent update to the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap. Reportedly, there were flaws or setback in the beginning on the test-net. However, things seem to be functioning properly now. Successful implementation of Medella will finally pave way for the mainnet launch of the beacon chain.
