Vitalik Buterin Proposed to Modify Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake Consensus and Staking Model

Vitalik Buterin posted a new article on X proposing three ways to solve a potential systemic complexity of Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. He wrote:"A PoS simplification proposal: make a design that only requires 8192 signatures per slot (even with SSF), making the consensus implementation considerably simpler and lighter."

The current problem is that Ethereum has a very high number of validators, reaching 895,000. This high number of validators supports decentralization, but brings strains to the network due to the huge number of cryptographic signatures it has to process.

Vitalik thinks of the current load and technical complexity is too high, and needs addressing. He outlined three ways to avoid this in the post by only requiring 8192 signatures per slot in the Ethereum blockchain.

The first suggestion is decentralized staking pool. This would require raising the minimum staking deposit size to 4096 ETH, incentivizing small-staker to join these pools.

Vitalik's second approach is to create two layers of staker. A “heavy” layer with the aforementioned 4,096 ETH which participates in finality, and a second “lighter” layer (with no minimum) that offers an additional coat of security. His final approach is rotating communities, chosen from the current pool of active validators and adjusted every slot for increased security.