Ethereum Must Move Faster or Risk Losing Its Edge Says Starkware Founder | Markets Outlook

**Eli Ben-Sasson** (0:00)
The biggest thing is like, you know, will Ethereum maintain its edge, right? You know, I often look at things like web browsers and the dominance of them in history. So at any given point in time, it may seem that, you know, whoever is the most used and most common is like, you know, gonna be there forever. But there are these tectonic shifts that take place once in a while, and they take a very long time to come about, but then they do happen.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (0:33)
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**Eli Ben-Sasson** (1:10)
Thank you for having me here, Jen. Always a pleasure.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (1:13)
Always a pleasure. We're talking about Ethereum.
Ethereum going through a lot of changes, a lot of chatter about it. I want to just start off by just getting your initial reaction, hearing where you are when you see Vitalik's plan for the future of Ethereum. What are your initial thoughts?

**Eli Ben-Sasson** (1:31)
I'm a big admirer of Vitalik. He's one of the smartest leaders of crypto out there, so always interesting to hear what he has to say. If anything, I would like to see more of his involvement in the leadership of, or at least more external and public involvement in the stewardship of Ethereum.
I think the plan overall is very good, very ambitious. It is needed. It is timely. Overall, I love it. You know, there are a few things that one would hope would be done just a little bit differently, but, you know, overall, this is a great plan and suggestion, and I support it.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (2:16)
I want to talk about some of those things in just a second. But for folks who are newer to the space than you, I want to start here. What do we need to know about Ethereum and the beginnings of Ethereum to understand where we are today and where Ethereum needs to go to continue to sustain, I guess, that first-mover advantage that it has?

**Eli Ben-Sasson** (2:38)
Yeah, so Ethereum has a great advantage in being the very first, you know, smart contract general platform and the platform in which most of the activity is rooted on. And that's a huge moat, which is really great.
But the technology, there are a number of things that need to, you know, just like any first-generation platform, there's always, computers always evolve and there's more to do. So definitely things like scale, better privacy, better foundations for good UX, of course, quantum resistance, all of these things are things that this bold program tries to tackle.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (3:23)
You just started by saying there are a few things that you would like to see done differently when we look at the new roadmap for Ethereum. What are those things?

**Eli Ben-Sasson** (3:31)
I hope it would have been a little bit faster and like, you know, just the timeline talks about, I think, three to four years and, you know, plan for three to four years usually gets delayed. So maybe more prioritization and a faster timeline would be good. Another thing, so there are a lot of, there's a lot of, there are a lot of elements there that are things we already implemented on StarkNet, you know, recursive Starks, a new lean virtual machine that would be Stark friendly. All of that is stuff that already exists on StarkNet. So I think that like, you know, borrowing from that or using a lot of it is open source and that could like really help move things faster.
So I would say the pace of things is something that I would like to see more and maybe more, you know, working with ecosystem to get it done. But overall, like, you know, this is something that is very much needed. And, you know, I support this plan generally.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (4:34)
If speed isn't addressed, if the timeline remains the same up to five years, I think it is, what's at risk?

**Eli Ben-Sasson** (4:42)
Well, the biggest thing is like, you know, will Ethereum maintain its edge, right? You know, I often look at things like web browsers and the dominance of them in history. So at any given point in time, it may seem that, you know, whoever is the most used and most common is like, you know, going to be there forever. But there are these tectonic shifts that take place once in a while, and they take a very long time to come about, but then they do happen. So like the biggest concern is that something just will, something more modern, better will overcome Ethereum, even though it's hard to see right now. But even if that's not the case, just, you know, five years is a very long time, and we need stuff now, right? If we want to change the way the world economy works and have freedom of financial innovation, which is something that, you know, Ethereum pioneered, then we need the infrastructure to support that today.