Crypto: Why Ethereum’s ‘walkaway Test’ And Quantum Readiness Matter More...
Vitalik Buterin’s “walkaway test” is a way to assess Ethereum’s long-term credibility. The network is intended to remain secure and functional even if its core developers were to stop actively upgrading it.
In a recent analogy, Buterin suggested that a protocol should resemble a tool you own, such as a hammer, rather than a service that gradually degrades if the “vendor” loses interest or becomes constrained by external pressures.
The end state he points to is an Ethereum that could “ossify if we want to,” where its value proposition does not depend on promised features that have yet to be delivered.
In the same post, Buterin outlines a detailed checklist of “boxes” Ethereum needs to tick to make ossification a more plausible long-term option:
Full quantum resistance (the focus of this article)
A scalability architecture capable of expanding to thousands of transactions per second (TPS), such as zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine validation combined with PeerDAS, with additional scaling achieved through parameter changes
A state architecture designed to last for decades, including partial statelessness, state expiry and future-proof storage structures
A general-purpose account model, often described as full account abstraction, moving away from the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA)
A gas schedule hardened against denial-of-service risks, covering both execution and zero-knowledge proving
Proof-of-stake economics structured to remain decentralized over the long term, while keeping Ether (ETH) useful as trustless collateral
Source: CoinTelegraph
