Ethereum price surges, what does founder Vitalik think?

Ethereum recently released the second phase of the Homestead launch plan, and the price continues to soar. Bitcoin.com had the honor of interviewing Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. What does Vitalik think of the current price surge? What does this mean for the progress of the Ethereum project? Microsoft has just announced that Ethereum will be one of the first blockchain services to be launched. How important is Microsoft's support for Ethereum? Vitalik gave his own views and talked about the establishment of Ethereum consensus and Ethereum's plans for the next year.

Bitcoin.com (BC): First of all, congratulations on launching Homestead, the second phase of the Ethereum project. What is the significance of this in the overall development plan of Ethereum? Also, does this mean that the Ethereum platform is now “safe” to use?

Vitalik Buterin (VB):

Homestead is the second of six phases we have currently mapped out. The other phases include Metropolis (Mist release), Serenity (Casper, aka Ethereum 1.5), and two more phases that are yet to be named - Ethereum 2.0 and Ethereum 3.0, which focus on scalability.

Yes, the reason we named it "Homestead" is to express to users that the risk of using the Ethereum platform is lower now than in the initial stage of Ethereum.

BC: BlockApps STRATO has just been certified by Microsoft’s Azure BaaS platform, and Microsoft’s head of strategy has also declared this a “watershed moment”. Do you agree with Microsoft’s view? To what extent will Microsoft’s support for Ethereum technology help the Ethereum project?

VB:

Microsoft's support does help Ethereum and Consensys / BlockApps a lot, adding credibility to our projects. However, I still think that the help brought by the participation of large companies is often overestimated: you have to remember that although large companies are 100 times more famous than small companies, they are not just focused on one technology, they have strong resources to invest in every project. So, what makes sense? The fact that Microsoft put Ethereum in the first place makes sense.

BC: Do you think this could accelerate the development of Ethereum-compatible blockchain applications for enterprises and attract more attention and funding?

VB:

Very likely. Many businesses are looking for a quick way to access Ethereum, and if BlockApps + BaaS can provide this service to businesses, that would be great. In addition to them, there are several other platforms doing the same thing, and I look forward to seeing their results.

BC: You recently revealed that the Ethereum Foundation was able to remain self-sufficient for 4.5 years due to the current surge in the price of ETH. So at what price do you think the price will rise enough to support the full development of the entire Ethereum project?

VB:

We've discussed this internally, and to achieve the highest level of what we want the project to achieve, we'll need a budget of about $20 million to $50 million.

We don’t know yet whether the funds will come from Ethereum, angel donations or other sources. But we will make full use of the funds we have to develop. In order to prevent the lack of funding in the future, we are also cashing out 2 million US dollars in case of emergency.

BC: Has the rise in the price of Ethereum given you more autonomy, such as being able to self-fund the development of your project?

VB:

Yes of course.

BC: When will the issuance of Ethereum decrease?

VB:

We plan to switch to POS mode (Proof of Stake) early next year, which will greatly reduce the issuance of Ethereum, possibly to 0 to 2 million per year.

BC: Do you know how many companies are currently experimenting with Ethereum technology?

VB:

There are quite a few, including energy companies, banks and other financial institutions, as well as groups composed of banks from different countries and hardware companies.

BC: Coinbase co-founder Fred Ersham recently posed the question on Twitter, “What are the most interesting Ethereum applications you’ve used, live or in development?” What do you think they are?

VB:

If you limit yourself to "already running" and "under development", it's Gnosis.

BC: Have you seen applications for the Ethereum platform that you didn’t anticipate?

VB:

Virtual world, Internet of Things.

BC: Since the release of Frontier, your team has resolved two consensus bugs. How does this consensus mechanism work? Is there anything the Bitcoin community can learn from it?

VB:

What makes our approach different from other projects is that we don't have a "reference client". If two clients disagree, we look at the differences to see which one is closer to the expected behavior (combining the yellow paper with common sense) and which one looks more like a bug. The one that looks more like a bug gets fixed.

We even encourage institutional developers and exchanges to use the public chain to run two different clients for added security. This helps reduce the risk of developer centralization. If there are four Bitcoin solutions, and each has its own objective market share, then the battle for block expansion between Core and Classic will become very different.

BC: Will Azure’s addition of IOTA affect Ethereum’s overall consensus mechanism?

VB:

I don’t know, I’ve looked at IOTA and its Blockweave consensus algorithm looks interesting, but I haven’t explored it in depth.

BC: What plans does Ethereum have for 2016?

VB:

We have developed a relatively detailed roadmap. After the Serenity PoC2 is released, I will write an article to elaborate on this roadmap. I will not go into details here. Casper and advanced encryption integration will be the focus of our research, and light clients and Mist will be the focus of our development.

Original article: https://news.bitcoin.com/vitalik-buterin-ethereums-price-rise-increases-our-sovereignty/
By Allen Scott
Translator: printemps
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/vitalik-buterin-ethereum)