Vitalik on Casper, Ethereum 2.0 and a ‘Pile of Trash’

This is a speech delivered by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum platform, at Blockchain Connect Conference: Academic 2019 on January 11 in San Francisco. Among other things, he's discussing misconceptions about a consensus algorithm (starting at 43:55.) According to Buterin, the purpose of a consensus algorithm is to keep a blockchain safe, not to make it fast. He said that, when a blockchain project claims they can do 3,500 transactions per second due to a different algorithm, "what we really mean is ‘We are a centralized pile of trash because we only have seven nodes running the entire thing.’” However, he still believes that there are good ways to make a blockchain fast.

Buterin Hopes Centralized Exchanges "Go Burn in Hell"