Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin Lists 'Worthwhile' Ideas for Developers to Work On

cryptonews.com:

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has listed several points that he argues are worth working on, during the ETH Seoul 2022, an Ethereum and blockchain-focused event held in South Korea.

In the first place, the Ethereum mastermind encouraged developers to build rollups, a type of scaling solution that involves rolling-up transactions and presenting them as a single transaction to decrease costs while increasing speed.

He specifically emphasized the growth of zero-knowledge technologies, and the need for more work on zero-knowledge rollups, aka zk-rollups. Buterin said that succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs), a proof architecture where one can demonstrate ownership of specific knowledge without disclosing that knowledge, are almost as important as the blockchain technology itself.

"I actually think zk-SNARKs might be like almost or even equally as important to the f,,,] privacy, openness, and [...] freedom kind of alternative. decentralized, web tech movement as blockchains are," Buterin said.

He said zk-SNARKs are "extremely" effective at giving users privacy and scalability while preserving security, which is comparable to what blockchains are trying to do. He added that zero-knowledge proofs can actually act as a compliment to blockchains.

Blockchains aim to provide a lot of security, but in exchange, they sacrifice privacy and scalability. On the other hand, zk-SNARKs give back privacy and scalability - "so build ZK apps," Buterin said.

He further encouraged developers to focus on privacy, claiming that it is less explored compared to scalability.

Notably, there are already some attempts to create protocols focused on preserving privacy. For instance, there is Proof of Humanity (PoH), a social