Buterin wants Ethereum to do far more work without forcing every computer on the network to repeat the same calculations.

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin envisions a 2030 network that uses cryptographic proofs and computers working off-chain to process more transactions without requiring every participant to repeat the same calculations.
• The proposed system would let users independently verify results more efficiently while improving privacy for payments, balances and wallet activity.
• Buterin said Ethereum’s transformation would accelerate after the planned Hegotá upgrade, though developers must still make proofs cheaper and coordinate parallel work securely.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Sunday that the network he envisions for 2030 may still be called a blockchain, but it would work very differently from today’s version.

In a post titled “The cryptographic world computer,” Buterin described a system combining a blockchain with cryptographic proofs and networks of computers working outside it. The plan through 2030 would change both how much Ethereum can do and what users can independently verify.

Ethereum already lets people send money, trade tokens and borrow through applications that run according to shared rules. The difficulty is making those applications serve more people without making the network too expensive to use or too demanding to check.

Today, a computer fully checking Ethereum repeats the calculations behind its transactions. It checks, for example, that someone sending money had enough to spend and that an application did what its rules allowed.

Repeating that work across many computers helps keep the network honest. It also means adding computers does not automatically let Ethereum handle more transactions, because each is busy checking much of the same activity.

Buterin argues that newer cryptographic tools can break that constraint.

A computer could process transactions and produce a short mathematical proof that it followed the rules. Other computers could check that proof much faster than they could repeat all the original work. Separate spot checks would help establish that the transaction records were still available for anyone who wanted to inspect them.

That would allow different computers to tackle different jobs while still checking one another’s results.

Ethereum’s developers wanted to distribute work this way a decade ago, Buterin wrote, but struggled to ensure every participant had done its part correctly.

“Back then, this was not viable for one primary reason: the missing ingredient was verification.”

Why are these changes needed

Ethereum’s computers repeat much of the same work to check that transactions follow the rules. That helps keep the network honest, but limits how much it gains from adding more computers.

Earlier attempts to divide the work assigned particular tasks to smaller groups. Coordinating those groups added delays, and the wider network could struggle to recover if one failed.

Buterin argues that mathematical proofs offer a way around that problem. A computer doing a job could provide proof that it followed the rules, allowing others to check its answer without repeating the whole calculation.

Computers could then work on different tasks at the same time, giving Ethereum more capacity as well as more independent checks.

However, Ethereum would still need to settle questions where the order matters, such as which of two payments spending the same funds came first. Buterin suggested that more of the work behind those payments could be completed beforehand, with proofs combined to reduce the information recorded on the blockchain.

Meanwhile, his privacy plans also cover information people reveal simply by using a wallet.

Checking a balance often involves asking an outside server about an address. Its operator can learn which accounts a person follows, even if the payments themselves are private. Buterin envisages hiding those requests alongside payment details and the rules an account uses to approve spending.

A business could then keep its payments confidential without revealing its accounts whenever an employee checked a balance.

How privacy is becoming key

Other crypto developers are pursuing similar goals.

Zcash already lets users send payments with encrypted addresses and amounts. About 4.9 million ZEC sat in its shielded pools on Friday, according to CoinDesk’s earlier analysis of ZecStats data, while the token traded around $1,660 earlier Sunday after gaining about 15% over the week.

Researchers behind the Shielded Bitcoin paper published Thursday have proposed borrowing Zcash’s payment design for BTC. Their specification leaves the mechanism for depositing and withdrawing actual bitcoin to separate research.

Read More: Bitcoin could soon get Zcash-style ‘shielded’ privacy without changing its rules

As such, Ethereum’s own plans still require substantial engineering work. Producing proofs needs to become efficient enough for widespread use. Computers handling separate jobs must also coordinate updates to the same balances and application records without interfering with one another.

Buterin’s 2030 comparison still lists cost and privacy limitations for complex applications. It envisages payments becoming final, meaning the network considers them irreversible, in roughly eight to 32 seconds.

He expects Hegotá, the upgrade planned for next year, to be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork, built with technology familiar to someone working on the network in 2015.

Subsequent upgrades would increasingly rely on mathematical proofs, tools that check software for errors and security designed to withstand future quantum computers.

“Starting after Hegota, this transformation becomes Ethereum's primary story,” he wrote.” The final outcome of this: much more cheap, scalable and private high-security computation than anything that could be done with the previous era's technology alone.

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