Vitalik: Ether Network Should Respond to 51% Attacks in a More Automated Way

In his keynote at ETHCC in Brussels, Ethernet co-founder Vitalik Buterin advocated for a push to make the Ethernet network more prepared for 51% attacks. He argued that an automated response to such attacks should be prepared, which would take the pressure off the social layer. A potential response to such attacks would be for honest verifiers to move to a fork of the chain, and current plans would rely heavily on social consensus, with community members working together to agree on a fork. However, Buterin argues that it would be nice if the network could be better prepared for such a response. Such a response, he says, would be largely automated and planned in advance. Buterin also advocated for increased adoption of light clients in the ethereum infrastructure layer, especially wallets. He said they should also support zk-EVM authentication, providing further support for Layer 2 networks. In addition to this, he believes that the protocol should be further simplified to make the work of developers and users easier.