Vitalik Buterin Proposes ‘Ossification’ to Lock Down Ethereum Base Layer

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has urged that the blockchain protocol upgrades to quantum-resistant cryptography within the next four years. Speaking during the Devconnect conference, Buterin noted that elliptic curve cryptography could be broken by quantum computing before the 2028 U.S. presidential election.

According to Buterin, the future of innovation is poised to shift to Layer 2, wallets, and privacy tools, rather than the core protocol layer. That informs his proposal for an upgrade in Ethereum’s protocol, which would involve embracing ossification over time. By that, Buterin expects Ethereum to lock down its core features to prevent changes that could introduce bugs into the ecosystem.

It is worth noting that Buterin’s ossification proposal reflects a departure from the blockchain solution’s foundational principles of flexibility and experimentation. Ethereum’s ability to change has formed the basis of its selling point in recent years, with developers able to build anything while exploring the protocol’s capacity to evolve and support new products.

From his comments, it has become clear that Buterin favors stability over adaptability, an idea many Ethereum users consider a departure from his original idea for the blockchain solution. Buterin’s latest idea involves a process that allows Ethereum to ossify different layers at different speeds. He believes the consensus layer could lock down changes while the Ethereum Virtual Machine remains openly flexible. Or vice-versa.

Notably, one of Ethereum’s core principles that Buterin is decentralization, which he did by comparing the blockchain protocol with the defunct FTX crypto exchange under Sam Bankman-Fried. According to Buterin, unlike Ethereum, centralization was at the core of FTX’s failure, as it required the public to trust the exchange blindly without insight into its internal workings.

Meanwhile, Buterin explained that the goal of his latest proposal is not to stifle or kill innovation but to redirect it away from the base layer and into the surrounding ecosystem. For instance, Layer 2s already handle most of Ethereum’s transaction volume. Therefore, the more activity that moves there, the more space opens up on layer 1 for settlement and security.