Buterin spoke about the future of the Ethereum network

Vitalik Buterin presented a roadmap for the ecosystem's transition to Ethereum 2.0, dubbed Serenity, in a keynote presentation at the Devcon 4 conference in Prague.

Not wanting to explain the update from a technical point of view, Buterin focused on the history and features of the creation of Ethereum 2.0.

The large-scale upgrade “Serenity” united key projects developed since 2014.  Ethereum 2.0, according to Buterin, is a unique combination of different features that are finally ready to be combined into one cohesive whole, Ethereum 2.0. Among the components of Serenity are the proof-of-stake algorithm, Casper project, scalability improvements, changes in the logic and economics of the protocol.

Vitalik said that the path to Proof-of-Stakebegan in 2014 when he published an article in a January blog. The article describes the Slasher algorithm, which was introduced as a basic concept. The idea behind Slasher is that if a person is caught doing something wrong, then it can be proven and the person can be punished for the crime. According to Vitalik, this is an opportunity to significantly improve safety. The team didn't use Slasher in 2014 because they didn't yet know if POS was the protocol they wanted to implement in the future. 

While working on the update, the team constantly looked at scalability. The key is how Ethereum will deliver the performance required for this. Improvements and updates to the virtual machine operating system (EWASM) system files have been made.

When asked when the concept will come to life, Buterin refused to answer, only noting that it is “not such a distant future.”