Interview Transcript: Vitalik Discusses Ethereum Development and Industry Trends

On April 7, 2025, Yan, the founder of the DappLearning community, conducted an interview in Chinese with Vitalik Buterin in Hong Kong. Below is a summarized compilation of the interview content:

Views on POS Upgrade

Vitalik believes that the price of ETH is not closely related to the consensus mechanism. He pointed out that the challenges facing ETH are: the success of ecological applications does not necessarily lead to an increase in the value of ETH. It is necessary to support those applications that can bring benefits to ETH holders and the long-term value of ETH.

About PBS Architecture and Centralization Concerns

Vitalik explained the design concept of the PBS architecture:

• Block construction and validation can be separated
• Low verification costs, maintaining decentralization
• Supernode power is limited and difficult to influence consensus.
• Mechanisms like Fossil can further decentralize trading options.

The Relationship Between Layer 1 and Layer 2

Vitalik believes that the current L2 has the following issues:

1. Security progress is slow
2. Insufficient interoperability between L2s
3. Withdrawal time is long

He proposed an improvement plan:

• Promote L2 upgrade to Stage 1 and Stage 2
• Develop Open Intents Framework to improve UX
• Adopting the 2/3 verification method using OP+ZK+TEE

Vitalik emphasized that L1 still needs to play an important role in ensuring the value of Ether. He revealed four major plans to enhance L1 scalability, which are expected to increase the gas limit by ten times.

Ethereum Upgrade Plan

• Pectra upgrade will be conducted at the end of this month
• Fusaka upgrade will be conducted in Q3 or Q4.
• Consider starting the upgrade as soon as only 4 client teams are ready to improve efficiency.

Views on the Development of Cryptography

Vitalik suggests:

• Most developers only need to master high-level languages
• ZK-RISC-V is a good development direction.
• MPC and FHE have the risk of committee attacks.

The Impact of AI on the Industry

Vitalik believes:

• AI may narrow the gap between experts and novices.
• The combination of technologies such as blockchain, AI, and cryptography is worth paying attention to.
• Hope to leverage technology to achieve "super individuals, super communities, super humans"

Suggestions for Ethereum Developers

Vitalik calls on developers:

1. Seize the current opportunity and try to solve the problems of past failures.
2. Develop applications that have both user value and sustainable business models.
3. Avoid falling into the extremes of "idealism but no one uses it" and "pure casino".