The statement from Buterin began with a sort of tongue-in-cheek commentary on the many Ethereum replacements that have come on the market in recent months.
Buterin continued by describing the four areas where he sees a need for improvement on the current Ethereum platform. These were privacy, consensus safety, smart contract safety and scalability.
For each of the first three, the Ethereum co-founder sees a solution that is actively developing. In the area of privacy, the Byzantium hard fork has created the ability for zk-SNARKs, a solution that Vitalik sees as a viable one with continued implementation. For consensus safety, the recent development, nicknamed ‘Casper,’ should bring solutions, and for smart contract safety, Viper and formal verification can produce real solutions.