Vitalik Buterin to Debut Ethereum Scaling Paper at Devcon

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin will present a new version of the project's 'mauve paper' at a developer conference in Shanghai next week.

Scheduled for 19th September, a talk called "Mauve Revolution" will focus on scaling features still in development on the decentralized application platform, including sharding and proof-of-stake.

The third version of the paper, it is likely to keep a similar spirit as past editions, which have seen Buterin use a tongue-in-cheek tone to discuss the big-picture developments the project is seeking to enact as it approaches key development milestones.

In interview, Buterin said that the talk will discuss the planned transition of ethereum's current code to a new, upgraded version of the platform dubbed "ethereum 2.0", a transition he estimates is about one-third complete.

Buterin said it is this "second stage" that the paper will discuss, telling CoinDesk:

"The ethereum roadmap now has what I would consider three main stages. The first stage is already finished, the second is [about] getting PoS out the door and adding in economic finality and basic sharding."

However, Buterin indicated that ethereum very much remains a work in progress, and that he sees this stage of its development lasting until 2020 or later. Should the network reach version 3.0, he said he’s still considering how it would move forward.

"I think the third stage will be much more challenging," he said, adding:

"[It] will require heavy involvement from people who have been thinking about problems like p2p network design, distributed hash tables, distributed systems concurrency for decades and are smarter than myself."

Vitalik Buterin image via YouTube