The main problem with ETH...

[tsaroz]

ETH's design was a bad idea from the start. Executing turing-complete smart contracts on-chain, adds undesired network bloat. The Blockchain wasn't designed to handle a large number of interactions per second. Vitalik and team should've separated contract deployment and execution from the main Ethereum blockchain. In other words, smart contracts will run off-chain, while ordinary transactions will run on-chain. Avalanche's 3-layer network design is the best way for scaling. For those unaware, "turing-completeness" means being able to "solve any complex computation problem if provided with enough memory and time".

What are your thoughts? Does ETH have a bad network design? If not, why? What do you think would be the best approach for scaling ETH (aside from centralized L2s)? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

It was good for its time and was an instant success but as demand and use increased, the problems started to be visible. Cryptokitties tested the limits of network. As the network got bigger and bigger, the development team were unable to make it quicker. It's not only the will of the developers but also limitation due to the initial nature of the network. Newer chains learned from the mistakes of Ethereum and worked on solving its problem from scratch. L2 on ethereum are better but they too have limitations of the Ethereum blockchain. Even though they be able to make more transactions per block than Ethereum, they are limited to how Ethereum blockchain develops in the future.

[oktana]

I don’t think it’ll be fair to call it bad. We can say that it could be better. All these advancements and preferences you mention, were they available and known at the time? If yes, is there a way we can tell that Vitalik knew that it’d be so while knowing that he could make changes to make it better. What I think is that in software, you may never really know until you write a code and it goes into production. Just like we’ve come to realize Bitcoin can’t handle daily transactions if half the world was to use it.

[Sayeds56]

ETH's design was a bad idea from the start. Executing turing-complete smart contracts on-chain, adds undesired network bloat. The Blockchain wasn't designed to handle a large number of interactions per second. Vitalik and team should've separated contract deployment and execution from the main Ethereum blockchain. In other words, smart contracts will run off-chain, while ordinary transactions will run on-chain. Avalanche's 3-layer network design is the best way for scaling. For those unaware, "turing-completeness" means being able to "solve any complex computation problem if provided with enough memory and time".

What are your thoughts? Does ETH have a bad network design? If not, why? What do you think would be the best approach for scaling ETH (aside from centralized L2s)? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

The design of Ethereum has been a topic of debate, particularly the execution of smart contract completely on chain. This method puts significant pressure on network and eventually leads to higher cost of transactions. Running smart contract off-chain appears a good idea to reduce congestion on network, however, it is upto the team of Ethereum to weigh the pros and cons and determine its viability for implementation.

In summary, there is no inherent flaw in Ethereum's design, however it requires continuous evolution to address scalability challenges while staying true to its core principles.

[Abiky]

The design of Ethereum has been a topic of debate, particularly the execution of smart contract completely on chain. This method puts significant pressure on network and eventually leads to higher cost of transactions. Running smart contract off-chain appears a good idea to reduce congestion on network, however, it is upto the team of Ethereum to weigh the pros and cons and determine its viability for implementation.

In summary, there is no inherent flaw in Ethereum's design, however it requires continuous evolution to address scalability challenges while staying true to its core principles.

With ETH's current design, developers will need to continuosly scale the network to keep fees at the minimum. This will lead to centralization issues in the long run. Especially when on-chain computations take up a lot of resources. Keeping everything off-chain is the way to go. Only leave basic financial applications (sending/receiving money) on-chain. Sort of like how Bitcoin does today.

ETH devs are sluggish enough (no offense) to re-design the network. Instead, they're forcing us to move to centralized L2 networks with low liquidity. Just like how BTC Core devs are forcing us to move to the centralized (and flawed) Lightning Network. ETH in its current state is a playground for whales and "Wall Street". Maybe it's time to move to another chain like Avalanche?

[DaveF]

The design of Ethereum has been a topic of debate, particularly the execution of smart contract completely on chain. This method puts significant pressure on network and eventually leads to higher cost of transactions. Running smart contract off-chain appears a good idea to reduce congestion on network, however, it is upto the team of Ethereum to weigh the pros and cons and determine its viability for implementation.

In summary, there is no inherent flaw in Ethereum's design, however it requires continuous evolution to address scalability challenges while staying true to its core principles.

With ETH's current design, developers will need to continuosly scale the network to keep fees at the minimum. This will lead to centralization issues in the long run. Especially when on-chain computations take up a lot of resources. Keeping everything off-chain is the way to go. Only leave basic financial applications (sending/receiving money) on-chain. Sort of like how Bitcoin does today.

ETH devs are sluggish enough (no offense) to re-design the network. Instead, they're forcing us to move to centralized L2 networks with low liquidity. Just like how BTC Core devs are forcing us to move to the centralized (and flawed) Lightning Network. ETH in its current state is a playground for whales and "Wall Street". Maybe it's time to move to another chain like Avalanche?

Why more centralization? It's been shown that hardware and storage prices keep dropping.
Now, will people want to bother running a local node is a different discussion. But the 'need more resources' is no more an issue then it really is for most things.
We are still under 2TB and it works fine on a few gen old i7

-Dave

[Jose Mourinho]

It is common knowledge that the main problem with ETH is the high transaction costs, and of course the developers have made certain efforts to minimize the costs incurred, one of the ways that is being done is increasing the network scale on each platform, Even though it's not optimal, I think this method will reduce ethereum transaction costs over time.

[MeGold666]

The main problem with Ethereum is that it's owned by a company and that it was premined and started as ICO.

Now when it switched to PoS, the company has even more power over it.

May God of thunder strike you if you ever use word "Decentralized" along with this doodoo.

[Psalms23]

Actually, Ethereum's design primarily revolves around its attempt to handle both simple transactions and complex smart contracts on the same layer, which has led to network congestion and high gas fees. While Ethereum's Turing-complete virtual machine enables it to support a wide range of decentralized applications (dApps), it has indeed introduced challenges in scalability and efficiency. Still, I say, it's better than most.

[bastian466]

What are your thoughts? Does ETH have a bad network design? If not, why? What do you think would be the best approach for scaling ETH (aside from centralized L2s)? Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

And that is why the Layer 2 solution was first created on the Ethereum network due to its scalability issue. They have added so many upgrades to the network that I cannot remember but those have not been effective. The transaction fees are still high and that is the reason why the BSC chain became popular in the last bull run and the next in line will be the Solana network as that is what I can forsee. A lot of new crypto projects are now using other blockchains that are cheaper, faster, and can handle congestion or they are using a layer 2 solution.

It's true that now many new projects use other networks like the ones you mentioned and there are many other networks such as TON, SUI and others. but in the next bull run which network will become popular and create real new projects

[Abiky]

Why more centralization? It's been shown that hardware and storage prices keep dropping.
Now, will people want to bother running a local node is a different discussion. But the 'need more resources' is no more an issue then it really is for most things.
We are still under 2TB and it works fine on a few gen old i7

-Dave

The rate at which network congestion grows is higher than the rate at which bandwidth/storage prices decline. Especially when on-chain smart contracts take up a lot of resources. Having Turing-completeness on a Blockchain is a terrible idea, imo. With rising costs, ETH will become utterly-centralized. The staking model will exacerbate the situation. Big exchanges and institutional investment companies will take a big part on the network's consensus with customer funds.

Ethereum is already doomed. That's why no other coin can outmatch Bitcoin. I sure hope it stays that way forever.

[Yokkattannee]

It is common knowledge that the main problem with ETH is the high transaction costs, and of course the developers have made certain efforts to minimize the costs incurred, one of the ways that is being done is increasing the network scale on each platform, Even though it's not optimal, I think this method will reduce ethereum transaction costs over time.

Indeed, transaction fees on Ethereum are often high and developers are working to address this, for example by increasing network capacity through Ethereum 2.0 and layer-2 solutions like Rollups. While not perfect, these measures are already helping to reduce fees and will hopefully continue to improve over time. Source: https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ & https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/layer-2-rollups/

[betswift]

As Vitalik said the trilemma of blockchains! Everyone knows about ETH problems, so that's why we have so many L2s built on different roll ups!

[DiMarxist]

From my research it is the transaction fee that is the major problem of Ethereum and the developers have not done anything to douse the issue and another one is the progress of the market price which is very slow foe some investors likeness. And I don't think because of that I will be interested to invest in Ethereum. And those who have invested in it can continue the investment. But I don't think those who started their investment late last year and early this year have made any gain from the investment.

[batang_bitcoin]

From my research it is the transaction fee that is the major problem of Ethereum and the developers have not done anything to douse the issue and another one is the progress of the market price which is very slow foe some investors likeness. And I don't think because of that I will be interested to invest in Ethereum. And those who have invested in it can continue the investment. But I don't think those who started their investment late last year and early this year have made any gain from the investment.

The fees have been not so cheap before but I think that we're seeing the better side of it and with their efforts, they're starting to lessen the fees. But even with that, the other networks are better in terms of reducing the fees, quickening their transactions and as well as with all of the scalability issues that ETH has, they're able to do something about that. But then, ETH is already popular and it's unlikely to get out of its 2nd spot in the entire market.

[sotelorene]

From my research it is the transaction fee that is the major problem of Ethereum and the developers have not done anything to douse the issue and another one is the progress of the market price which is very slow foe some investors likeness. And I don't think because of that I will be interested to invest in Ethereum. And those who have invested in it can continue the investment. But I don't think those who started their investment late last year and early this year have made any gain from the investment.

Before venturing into any business one need to find out the advantages and disadvantages of the business and check if the disadvantages are bearable or not cause you can just jump into business knowing fully well that the disadvantages is something to compare with the advantages. Is the person planning to move forward or backward, what an saying in essence is that Etherum Gas fee is too much and their transaction always take longer time before it will arrive, just imagine a situation where someone wants to withdraw from it's ETH wallet to another where he or she can use the money and lets say the thing is very urgent will the person still be waiting for the transaction to arrive, these are things they should work on.

[Abiky]

Indeed, transaction fees on Ethereum are often high and developers are working to address this, for example by increasing network capacity through Ethereum 2.0 and layer-2 solutions like Rollups. While not perfect, these measures are already helping to reduce fees and will hopefully continue to improve over time. Source: https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ & https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/layer-2-rollups/

Wasn't Ethereum 2.0 launched already? If I'm not mistaken, this new version brought along the PoS consensus mechanism. Yet, ETH still has high network fees and slow transaction processing times. And L2 networks with Rollups are only short-term solutions to the problem. We need something that would scale the ETH blockchain in the long-term. The only way to do this is by increasing on-chain transaction capacity. But for some reason, developers are reluctant in doing it. They left everything in the hands of L2 devs. Just like how Bitcoin Core devs are right doing now.

With ETH, it's worse because smart contracts take a lot of resources. Constant interactions with the Blockchain will keep it congested for a very long time. Developers should've moved smart contract deployment and execution completely off-chain. Talk about a bad design. Time will tell us if ETH will survive or become a failed experiment. Let's move on, shall we?

[mindrust]

We have gone through it a million times probably. ETH is a premined shitcoin and centralized. Ripple is another premined shitcoin and also centralized. USDT are fake USD. And then what? nobody really gives a damn.

There is bitcoin, there is litecoin, there is monero and there is doge for the lulz. Tbh I am not really interested in the rest of the crypto. I don't care what real world problem they solve (and usually they don't any), I don't care how they performed. LTC, BTC, DOGE, XMR are enough for everything. If the others disappear tomorrow and the world will become a better place actually.

[danherbias07]

I think moving to POS was the mistake not the design of their blockchain and the smart contracts within it. They somehow survived it until ICO came that bloated their chain because of the number of smart contracts that was created and the vast amount of transactions that is happening. Even before, it was already a slow network and they thought they can fix it by moving to POS. Well, it did somehow but what I like now is the transactions fees getting cheaper but I hate it when it comes to ERC20 fees.
I don't think there's much fixing that will happen but they will always be the top 1 when it comes to the altcoin industry and for many years it's possible that may not change.

[bitgolden]

"Undesired" is the part that makes me laugh, the coin itself is second ranked coin that is basically king of all altcoins, and you think that is undesired? All these people who think that it would have been even better without it, could see all the ones without it and how they are not second, not all coins have it, eth does, and it's second ranked. This should have been enough for people to see that it is desired and not undesired but they still want to ignore that part for some reason.

All in all I believe that we are going to see people still do not understand it and look for more, and improvements are fine as long as people like them, but you could also take it to some place that is not wanted, so it should be closely looked if people even want that.

[Abiky]

I think moving to POS was the mistake not the design of their blockchain and the smart contracts within it. They somehow survived it until ICO came that bloated their chain because of the number of smart contracts that was created and the vast amount of transactions that is happening. Even before, it was already a slow network and they thought they can fix it by moving to POS. Well, it did somehow but what I like now is the transactions fees getting cheaper but I hate it when it comes to ERC20 fees.
I don't think there's much fixing that will happen but they will always be the top 1 when it comes to the altcoin industry and for many years it's possible that may not change.

PoS was supposed to improve performance and focus on cost-efficiency. But so far, things remain the same as before. It's even worse with the "meme" coins craze. We can blame on-chain smart contracts for this.

Wouldn't Ethereum had less load if everything else is moved off-chain (no centralized L2s)? Sort of how Avalanche does. Consensus has its own layer, smart contracts have their own layer, and the base chain (for normal transactions) has its own layer. The 3-tier approach for scaling is genius, imo. ETH devs should redesign the network for the benefit of all. L2s won't stay cheap forever. They're limited by the L1s capabilities.

Solana is even more practical than Ethereum. If it wasn't because of the constant network outages, it would've already "killed" ETH as the leading smart contracts platform in the world. The only reason why ETH is still #1 (as in the number one altcoin), it's because of its first mover advantage. Hopefully, the network will improve to a point where it becomes usable again.