Vitalik: The development of the Ethereum protocol should introduce clear simplification and garbage collection mechanisms

Vitalik.eth posted on the X platform that the simplicity of protocols is an important aspect of trustlessness, through exit testing, and autonomy. Even if the degree of decentralization is very high, if a protocol becomes bloated due to hundreds of thousands of lines of code or complex cryptography, it will ultimately fail.

Vitalik Buterin's concern about the development of the Ethereum protocol is that over-adding new features to meet specific needs can undermine long-term autonomy. To address the issue of protocol bloat over time due to backward compatibility, the Ethereum development process needs clear simplification and garbage collection mechanisms. Simplification standards include minimizing the number of lines of code, avoiding unnecessary dependencies on complex technical components, and adding more invariants. Garbage collection can be done in a piecemeal or large-scale manner, such as replacing PoW with PoS, or downgrading low-frequency complex functions to smart contract code through Rosetta-style backward compatibility. Vitalik Buterin hopes that the pace of Ethereum's transformation can slow down in the long run and strives to prevent unnecessary parts from becoming a permanent burden on the protocol.