Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the crypto industry may be overcomplicating what blockchains are actually useful for.
In an article on
Instead of starting with Ethereum and trying to find places to use it, he suggested that developers should first ask themselves what kinds of tools are needed to create secure, open, censorship-resistant technology.
From this perspective, Ethereum’s most important function may be surprisingly simple: acting as what cryptographers call a “public bulletin board.”
Many secure digital systems require a place where information can be publicly published and verified. This could include things like secure voting systems, digital certificate revocation lists, or records used in cryptographic protocols. These systems do not necessarily need smart contracts or complex financial transactions, but rather a shared space where data can be reliably stored and accessed.
Ethereum can fulfill this role because it provides a decentralized network where anyone can publish data and anyone can read it.
Buterin said recent upgrades to Ethereum make this type of usage even more practical. An upgrade, known as PeerDAS, increases the amount of data the network can store and share, with plans to increase capacity even further in the future.
Although these systems do not always require payment, an economic cost is often necessary to prevent spam on open networks. This is where Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), comes in.
Payments can help protect decentralized services from abuse. Buterin gives as an example if a messaging app allowed anyone to create an unlimited number of accounts for free, attackers could flood the system with spam. Requiring small payments in ETH can make this type of attack costly while keeping the system open to everyone.
Buterin also noted that Ethereum can help power new types of payment systems. Technologies such as zero-knowledge payment channels could allow people to pay small amounts for services while keeping transactions private.
Smart contracts also still play an important role, such as holding security deposits or enabling automated agreements between users.
Overall, Buterin described Ethereum as a kind of “global shared memory” – an infrastructure that allows many different applications to store data, exchange values, and coordinate with each other.
“Ethereum has a lot of value, as you can see from first principles if you step back and think of it purely as a technical tool: a shared global memory,” he wrote.
Read more: Vitalik Buterin pushes “DVT-Lite” to make Ethereum validator setup easier
