In response to a question from Ryan Selkis, Buterin expressed his opinion at Messari Mainnet 2022 that he believes two prominent cryptocurrencies will soon follow in Ethereum's footsteps and switch to a PoS algorithm. Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, the founder of Zcash, also attended the event.
As reported by Decrypt, Buterin said the following at Messari's annual conference Mainnet (September 21-23, 2022) — in New York City:
“I’d say should… As proof of stake matures, I expect it to just increase in legitimacy more and more over time… I hope that Zcash moves over. I am also very hopeful that Dogecoin is going to evolve over to proof of stake at some point soon.“
On September 23, Messari Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Selkis moderated a conversation between Vitalik Buterin and Zooko Wilcox (founder and CEO of Electric Coin Company).
In Decrypt's report, Wilcox was asked if Zcash developers were also contemplating PoS consensus, and he replied:
“We’ve literally been waiting to see what we can learn from Ethereum. I guess what we’ve learned is that it actually works.“
It is not the first time Buterin called for Zcash to move to Proof of Stake. In 2018, he said the same thing, to which Zooko replied that he would wait for Ethereum to do it so that he could see what would happen.
Dogecoin has been reported working with the Dogecoin foundation that Vitalik is migrating from PoW to PoS earlier this year. However, no specific date has been set for the switchover.
The moderator, Selkis, also covered various topics pertaining to blockchain technology. One of the topics discussed was transaction fees.
In Buterin's view, scalability is more important than privacy, especially when it comes to fees. It will depend on the cost of sending a transaction and whether a blockchain is viable compared to mainstream technology. Buterin stated:
“Transaction fees can feel like just a number, but for the communities, we want to have … outside wealthy countries … the difference between 3 dollars and 3 cents is a really big deal. And that’s something we need actually to deliver on.”
He also discussed what Ethereum will do after the Merge. He explained that the Surge, the next major upgrade on Ethereum, will come in stages rather than in one large event.
In an earlier statement, Buterin indicated that Ethereum would only be 55% complete following the merger.
In the Surge, the Ethereum Foundation intends to implement sharding technology in order to dramatically increase the rate at which Ethereum can process transactions from 20 per second to approximately 100,000 per second.
In response to the crackdown by authorities on Tornado Cash, Zooko spoke about Zcash's role in the coming months.
A major advantage of Zcash is its tech layer and culture of privacy, which he believes will make a difference.
Buterin's projections for Ethereum were not all agreed upon by him. In his opinion, the network's base layer would not have privacy within five years.
“I don’t know if you’re right that (the attempt to) re-decentralize the block producer ecosystem is going to be successful,” he added.
Vitalik replied that time would tell.
