Ethereum Creator Announces Plasma Scaling on Ethereum Concept
Despite the volatility in its price, Ethereum is set for a long run, considering the fact that its creator, Vitalik Buterin, has not yet run out of plans for the cryptocurrency and its underlying system. With this in mind, in what can be referred to as a surprise appearance at the EthCC Conference in Paris, Buterin decided to present a scaling solution which would increase the computational power harnessed from the Ethereum blockchain network.
To put things better into perspective, the solution, known by the name of Plasma, has been created by Buterin and Joseph Poon last year. It aims to use a system of smart contracts, and therefore boost the overall capacity of Ethereum. This will happen after the system creates an entirely new layer of smart contracts, capable of interacting with the main Ethereum blockchain.
At this time, the available prototype only works if all users download and validate the smart contracts onto the Plasma system, thus making it limited. However, it was explained that this can be limited down to data points. In his statement, Buterin mentioned that: ‘The main benefit here is that basically the amount of data that clients need to process goes down by a lot’.
With this in mind, users will not be required to download the entire Plasma network and history. Rather, users will be able to create Plasma Coins by sending deposits to a smart contract. Based on this aspect, instead of having to download and verify the smart contracts, users can now simply track the Plasma Coins (tokens) that have been created within the very system.
According to Buterin, "Now users only have to verify the availability and correctness of the Plasma chain only at the specific index that they want to spend, or the specific index of any coins that they own and coins that they care about (…) Hopefully when the next multi-billion dollar exchange written by a totally incompetent developer gets hacked, no one will lose any money,"
Apart from boosting exchange security, the Ethereum founder believes that the discovery can also play an important part in accelerating the scaling progress, as the platform is currently facing pressure when it comes down to dealing with the increasing demands of the users.
Based on everything that has been outlined so far, the new idea will simply make Plasma scale, while also reducing the requirements that normal users would have had to comply with. All this, while also scaling the network to accommodate a larger user base.