Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin “a consensus algorithm is to keep a blockchain safe”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke about the purpose of a consensus algorithm within a blockchain network like Ethereum during the recently concluded blockchain conference held in San Francisco. The renowned developer was responding to a question whether the impending upgrade on Ethereum will include “ any transaction throughput goals.” While shedding light on other blockchain projects in the industry, Buterin said:

“So I’ve noticed a lot of misconceptions here. Because, like, there’s a lot of like, honestly, bad crypto projects that try to claim. ‘Oh, because we use fancy BFT, we can do 5,000 transactions per second and proof-of-work can only do 15.”

He added that a consensus is vital especially when it comes to processing transactions on a blockchain.

“There’s a lot of horrible misconceptions inside that. Because the purpose of a consensus algorithm is not to make a blockchain fast. The purpose of a consensus algorithm is to keep a blockchain safe. With the way proof-of-work works, it becomes unsafe if computers spend more than maybe 10% of the time actually mining and verifying blocks. Bitcoin-NG or things like the various forms of proof-of-stake, it could potentially be safe if you go higher than 10%. But the difference is still very small.”

The co-founder took a stand against some of the vocal cryptocurrency projects that claim that they are better than Ethereum and can achieve more transactions per second (TPS) because of having a different algorithm. He said:

"When a blockchain project claims 'We can do 3,500 TPS because we have a different algorithm,’ what we really mean is ‘We are a centralized pile of trash because we only have 7 nodes running the entire thing.’”