Vitalik Buterin reflects on the possibility of Ethereum miners abandoning the network

Vitalik Buterin does not seem to be worried about miners leaving the Ethereum network or a possible 51 percent attack. According to recent comments on the popular Chinese forum, the Ethereum Co-Founder argued that the possibility of miners forging the chain is not high.

“If some miners leave, new ones can come. If the miners attack 51%, we will all move to POS as soon as possible,” Buterin said.

The debate at the forum referred to above concerned the implementation of the EIP-1559, a plan that was overwhelmingly opposed by Ethereum miners. EIP-1559 is a plan to change the Ethereum fee market by burning transaction fees rather than offering them to miners.

Last month, ETH miners racked up more than 20k ETH of gas payments, in addition to their block incentives. After the first proposal was made to EIP-1559, several ETH miners came together to make a petition against the introduction of the same, with comments like Flexpool,

“Ethereum developers initially needed miners for their coin but once successful they’ve thrown them under the bus.”

 

With increasing fees on the Ethereum network continuing to be a problem, the transition to EIP-1559 has increasingly become a requirement, according to other Ethereum proponents.

“The greater significance of EIP-1559 is that almost every exchange can be confirmed within 1-2 blocks,” Buterin said, answering concerns as to whether the implementation of EIP-1559 will lead to adverse reactions from miners. Buterin points out that the change to acting as a Proof of Stake (POS) network would address most of these issues.

Ethereum is in the process of moving to ETH 2.0, with recent news confirming that ETH 2.0 currently has over 100,000 validators.

They were 100,002 at the time of writing, with 3,208,226 ETH being deposited. This amounted to more than $5.12 billion invested, which accounts for 2.8% of ETH’s total supply.

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