Now that the Ethereum merge is complete, Vitalik Buterin thinks other blockchains like Dogecoin and Zcash should follow suit.
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“As proof of stake matures, I expect it to just increase in legitimacy more and more over time,” Vitalik said over video chat at the Mainnet conference Friday.
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“I hope that Zcash moves over. I am also very hopeful that Dogecoin is going to evolve over to proof of stake at some point soon,” he added.
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Earlier this month, Ethereum executed its long-awaited merge event, moving its main network from the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) model to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) model.
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The high-stakes event went smoothly, said Buterin, despite every test network merge experiencing “some kind of bug.”
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Zcash could join Dogecoin, Ethereum
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At Mainnet, Buterin spoke with Messari CEO Ryan Selkis and the CEO of Electric Coin Company Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn (Electric Coin Company leads Zcash development).
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“You emailed me your plan for Ethereum, and I was like, ‘holy shit. This is so exciting. And it’ll never work,’” Wilcox-O’Hearn said. “And then you and the Ethereum [developers] proved me wrong. It totally worked.”
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Zooko, who’s most known for his connection to the PoW privacy coin Zcash, also thought the Ethereum merge would “never work.”
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But now, he’s singing a different tune.
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“You should be proud of yourselves for the rest of your life,” Zooko said, referring to Ethereum developers and Buterin.
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When asked if Zcash would execute its own merge-like event, Electric Coin Company’s CEO said he was waiting to see how Ethereum fares since the upgrade.
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“We've literally been waiting to see what we can learn from Ethereum,” Zooko said. “I guess what we’ve learned is that it actually works.”
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Proof-of-stake season
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But what does Buterin think of other blockchains besides Zcash and Doge making the leap to PoS?
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“For the other chains, we’ll see,” he said. “Some of them might; I’m sure at least some of them never will. There might even be some compromise middle ground where some chains end up moving to some kind of hybrid proof of stake.”
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But for now, Buterin is simply relieved with the state of Ethereum, which he said is now in a much better position post-merge.
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“A sky that has been cloudy for almost a decade finally cleared,” he added.
