Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed some regrets regarding the initial design of Ethereum during his attendance at the ETH Berlin event last week. These regrets encompassed the development of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), smart contracts, and Ethereum’s Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism.
Regarding the development of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Vitalik mentioned that the initial design chose 256-bit processing instead of 64-bit or 32-bit. However, this initial design proved to be too complex for 256-bit and inefficient. It could generate a significant amount of redundant data on the blockchain even when executing simple tasks.
In terms of smart contract optimization, Vitalik stated that early Ethereum developers should have focused on enabling developers to write smart contracts with less and simpler code.
Additionally, Vitalik pointed out that Ethereum’s transition from the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to the Proof of Stake (PoS) mechanism in 2022 should have been initiated earlier, emphasizing its historical significance.
Vitalik also emphasized the importance of having automatic logs for Ethereum transactions from the very beginning.
Lastly, Vitalik expressed that if given the chance to choose again, he would use the SHA-2 encryption algorithm for Ethereum instead of the current Keccak algorithm being used.
Despite these minor design mistakes, Vitalik acknowledged that it is inevitable for any project to encounter such situations.