Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a new blog on Tuesday coming into action after a long period of time. He titled his blog “Exit Games for EVM validiums: The Return of Plasma”. Vitalik resurfaced the concept of Plasma, a blockchain scaling solution.
Vitalik looks to revive Plasma
Plasma was originally introduced in 2017. It allows off-chain storage of all data and computation, excluding deposits, withdrawals, and Merkle roots. It is being highlighted that Plasma’s approach offers substantial scalability advantages without being constrained by on-chain data availability. However, plasma faced challenges related to large client-side data storage costs and fundamental limitations, leading to its eclipse by rollups.
In the blog, Buterin proposes a reconsideration of Plasma’s potential. He shed light on its validity proofs, also known as ZK-SNARKs. He argues that these proofs can effectively address the hurdles faced by Plasma in payment scenarios. ETH co founder particularly showed his concern about client-side data storage.
He added that validity proofs present a diverse set of tools that could facilitate the development of a Plasma-like chain running an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Buterin believes a substantial percentage of assets could still be securely managed in practice through this revived approach. However, Plasma’s security guarantees may not cover all users due to inherent complexities.
Can Plasma help ETH?
Vitalik Buterin highlighted that in 2023 Plasma is still an underrated design space. He emphasized the Rollups gold standard and its security properties that cannot be matched. However, he concluded by stating that this all comes from the developer experience perspective.
He informed that ZK-EVMs are finally coming to fruition this year making it an excellent opportunity to re-explore this design space. This could allow them to come up with even more effective constructions to simplify the developer experience and protect users’ funds.
On the market side, Ethereum is riding on an upward rally. ETH price is up by 31% in the 30 days. It is trading at an average price of $2,034, at the press time. ETH’s 24 hour trading volume is up by 35% to stand at $13 billion.