Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledges that Bitcoin is still ahead in certain aspects compared to ETH in the space. He also recognizes that layer 2 still has a lot of room for improvement.
On June 4, the Ethereum (ETH) co-founder responded to a thread on X where users were debating on where the protocol’s strengths lie and what it still needs to improve on. Some users believed that Ethereum is already leading the industry in terms of censorship resistance, but not in terms of transactions per seconds.
Vitalik Buterin confirmed this, stating that Ethereum is currently in the lead when it comes to censorship resistance and security. However, he also acknowledged that there are some aspects in the space that are dominated by Bitcoin (BTC).
“There’s some aspects of this where bitcoin is ahead imo [in my opinion],” said Buterin in his post.
Buterin admitted that Bitcoin was superior to Ethereum in aspects like coding simplicity, less protocol changes, node count as well as its lesser dependency on remote procedure call services or RPCs like Infura, Alchemy, or Ankr.
In other words, Buterin believes that Ethereum is more advanced in censorship resistance and security through its flexible and evolving protocol. With innovations like Proof of Stake, rollups, and advanced MEV mitigation strategies, Ethereum has built a system that actively counters centralization and censorship at multiple levels.
In another post, Vitalik Buterin emphasizes ETH core priorities and its areas of focus in the layer 2 space. Responding to another user stating that cross-chain interoperability is “solved” at the infrastructure layer, Buterin disagreed by saying there’s still work to be done on that end.
“It’s not solved until cross-L2 actions can be as censorship-resistance, trustless and intermediary-free as within-L2 actions,” said Buterin.
His statement indicates that there is still a reliance on third parties and intermediaries that hinder true decentralization for users in the crypto space. Buterin then brings up the “no regression principle” as he reminded users of the fundamentals of native ETH transfers on layer 1, which are censorship-resistance, trustlessness and intermediary-free
Bitcoin versus Ethereum
Bitcoin’s model retains significant advantages considering its codebase is less complex, allowing its users to send BTC through secure and reliable transfers. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s coding has more complexity, with its smart contracts and EVM.
Bitcoin’s codebase makes it easier to audit, maintain, and trust over the long term. Not only that, the high number of Bitcoin full nodes, due to its light design and low hardware requirements, also helps to reinforce censorship resistance and network reliability.
Unlike Ethereum which has undergone approximately 20 major network updates, including the latest Pectra upgrade that was launched on May 8, Bitcoin has experienced significantly less protocol changes to its original model.
