Ethereum Denies VDF Rumors

It had been reported that Ethereum has to make the transition to a proof-of-stake system and was to invest $15 million in the development of Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) which would aid this transition. However, Justin Drake, a member of the research team for Ethereum, has clarified that these rumors are false. While Ethereum will be switching to a PoS system, they have no intentions to spend $15 million.

“The EF Ethereum Foundation is not looking to spend $15m. We are looking to split funds 50/50 with Filecoin or other financial partners,” he said.

VDFs would be beneficial for Ethereum because it is designed to protect networks that make use of randomly generated values from possible attacks and hacks. In the case of a blockchain, a malicious user could take advantage of the random value by predicting the figures to the chosen, thereby manipulating the leaders and validators that will be selected through the protocol. Ethereum as a network has been very cautious about protecting its network from possible attack, particularly in light of the double spend attack they suffered on Ethereum Classic earlier this year.

According to the roadmap for the Ethereum Network, the switch to a PoS platform will take place during the Serenity upgrade, which is the fourth and last stage of the network launch. As of now, the network is in the third stage called Metropolis, which consist of two hard forks which are Byzantium and Constantinople. However, the Constantinople hard fork was recently postponed after some bugs were found in the system.

The Serenity stage is more than just the last stage in the Ethereum Network project but is also the stage by which many of the problems that currently plague the network will have been addressed such as scalability, mining centralization, economic finality, and security. The issue of scalability is particularly important as it was recently revealed that Ethereum only had 6 percent of the d’App market and one of the reasons given for this was its scalability problem which has pushed developers to other competing platforms such as EOS and TRON, who control and combined 94 percent of the d’App market.

By instituting these improvements in Serenity, Ethereum will be able to more aggressively compete in the d’App market and can capture a larger market share. On top of this, users will have access to new and improved features that will make their use of the platform easier.

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