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Like it or not, cryptocurrencies have yet to see mass adoption. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all the rest are barely used as a form of currency, a store of value, a unit of account, or even as programmable money in today’s world.
Vitalik Buterin, the 20-something creator of Ethereum, recently spoke to Canadian outlet The Star to talk about what he believes will boost the adoption of crypto assets.
Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin on Adoption
The Canadian-Russian programmer, who has become one of the most well-respected individuals in the crypto space, argued that one of the main issues with adoption is scalability
Indeed, at maximum capacity, Bitcoin can only handle seven transactions per second on the base layer. And while this isn’t necessarily a problem because of second-layer solutions (ex. Lightning Network), most retail users are currently only cut out to make use of simple BTC payments, and thus are bound by the 7 tx/s limit.
He's a pioneer in the cryptocurrency world. The researcher, programmer and writer is known for his work in developing the Ethereum platform and associated digital currency Ether. @VitalikButerin spoke to the Star about his cryptocurrency journey: https://t.co/vT0Qag2vE8
— Toronto Star (@TorontoStar) August 19, 2019
Ethereum isn’t much better, having a maximum capacity of around double that of Bitcoin. However, Vitalik and his team at the Ethereum Foundation and at other development consortiums are looking to fix this through an upgrade dubbed “Serenity”, which he says is “a way to bring technical improvements, like PoS and sharding, together to improve the Virtual Machine, Merkle Trees, the efficiency of the protocol, and a whole bunch of small technical things that you have never heard of.”
Scalability isn’t the only concern, however. Speaking to The Star, the coder wunderkind touched on issues with usabilityaccount security. Indeed, anecdotally, this writer has heard many of his friends and families touch on how crypto seems difficult to use and is plagued with constant hacks. Just look to the hack of the Ethereum-based DAO, or the theft of millions worth of Bitcoin from Mt. Gox in the early days of this industry.
But, to put a cherry on top, Buterin noted that even if you solve all the aforementioned problems, you’re left with one pressing question: how do you turn [the technology] into something people will use? In other words, if the technology is impeccable — easy-to-use, secure, private, fast, decentralized, etc. — how will you bring the public over to use, say, an Ethereum decentralized finance application or a Bitcoin-based Liquid Network altcoin for in-game purchases.
