Steve Carney 
During a recent conversation in a Twitter Spaces session Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin emphasized the importance of scaling solutions for Bitcoin. He pointed out that if Bitcoin aims to be more than just a payments tool then it needs to explore options for increasing its scalability. Buterin highlighted the various experiments that Ethereum has undertaken in recent years as examples of scaling solutions.
Political Differences and Strange Politics of Bitcoin
Buterin talked briefly about Bitcoin’s political underpinnings and called them “strange politics.” He stated that he doesn’t have the same attitude as Bitcoiners referring to a disparity in philosophy . This discovery brought to light the various viewpoints and methods used by the bitcoin community.
Learning from Ethereum’s Scaling Solutions
The topic of discussion among Buterin, Eric Wall (also known as “Altcoin slayer”) and Udi Wertheimer was the slow transaction throughput of Bitcoin and the requirement for scaling solutions . Three individuals talked about how scaling trials in Ethereum may be instructive for Bitcoin. Buterin particularly named successful rollup solutions that Bitcoin may take into consideration including Plasma, ZK Rollups and instances like Optimism and Arbitrum .
Buterin expressed a preference for investigating this specific strategy and underlined the value of keeping an open mind toward ZK-snark-based solutions . The discussion used examples from Ethereum’s extensive scaling experiments such as the current EIP-4844 upgrade which allows for up to 100k transactions per second with blob blocks .
Finding Common Ground and Shared Challenges
Buterin listed eleven aspects of the Ethereum and Bitcoin ecosystems that are similar despite their differences. Immutability claims, layer one privacy concerns and difficulties with decentralized consensus models are a few of them . In order to promote cooperation and understanding Buterin underlined the need of identifying common experiences and lessons .
A World with Both Chains
In closing Buterin expressed his belief that a world with at least one of these chains is better than a world without any. While acknowledging the differences and challenges he encouraged the exploration of common ground and the potential for collaboration between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities . The conversation shed light on the need for scaling solutions in Bitcoin and the importance of considering Ethereum’s experiences in addressing similar challenges.
