Ethereum has been on the rise lately with the ETH price surging exponentially. Many believe that ETH is ushering in the start of an altcoin bull market. However, everything is not going on as planned in the Ethereum space. The Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, says that it is likely that several of the Ethereum applications may fail.
Buterin also said that other applications will succeed but he says that it all depends on how the project, in general, will move forward. He also says that he would “freely admit” that Ethereum 2.0 is “much harder” to implement than he had expected looking at it from a technical perspective.
These remarks were made during a debate with Samson Mow, a Bitcoin maximalist, on Peter McCormack’s podcast on Aug. 16. In that debate, the trio discussed the reason for the open warfare that exists between the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks and whether ETH can deliver on its many promises.
The self-avowedly McCormack is “not far off” from a Bitcoin maximalist position, asked Vitalik:
“Do you ever feel like Ethereum has become a much more challenging project or idea than you originally envisaged, and potentially, you’ve bitten more than you can chew? And that it gets to the point where there’s no turning back?”
Buterin responded:
“I freely admit that Ethereum 2.0 is much harder than we expected to implement from a technical perspective. I don’t think that we discovered any fundamental flaws that make it impossible and I do think it will be finished. It’s just a matter of time and it’s been progressing quite quickly lately.”
Buterin Explains
Speaking genuinely on how he expects the project to develop; Buterin also said that it is highly probable that some Ethereum applications may fail as the others succeed. However, he sees these errors and flaws in the project’s multiple aspects as being independent of one another:
“If Ethereum tries to get into one space, and it turns out it’s not useful for that space; then fine, you know, those applications will not go anywhere. Meanwhile, the other sectors will keep going.”
Samson Mow had criticized Ethereum proponents earlier in the podcast for allegedly shifting the narrative around the project’s goals and ambitions arguing that:
“It’s okay to pivot and evolve, but there needs to be a healthy disclaimer that this thing is experimental. A lot of the Ethereum people are saying Ethereum is money now and whatnot and now it’s competing with Bitcoin […] even I’m not sure what Ethereum is, or what it does, or what it competes with. Is it a world computer? Or is it money?”
Responding to that allegation, Buterin hit back mainly against the notion that Ethereum is reducible to money and said that non-financial applications have been an important part of the project since its beginning:
“I did not initiate the whole Ether is a money thing, the Ethereum Foundation did not initiate it. That’s something that did come from the outside.”