The second thing I did I watched an interview with Vitalik where he said that in Ethereum 2.0 they are thinking about getting away from every node executing every transaction. In a paper you quoted before exactly such solution is described with double decker blockchain where one layer is used to simply store the state. This seems to be the exact solution they are going to adopt.
need_war you need to understand that there are no problems in computer science that can't be solved. If particular architecture doesn't work they will change it to the one that works. The whole thing about blockchain with all the excitement around it seems to me like we say in Russia "sucked out of finger" . But that doesn't mean that Ethereum is not gonna work and that we won't be able to make money on it. Crazy youngsters like Vitalik will develop lots of shit on Ethereum just because people have nothing better to do. No point to talk further, what I studied so far is enough for me to start pouring money in mining farm for it.
Did you read https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/12/28/understanding-serenity-part-2-casper/ and the discussion that follows?
As Bob McElrath points out there, the Casper is not exempt from the centralization tendency that is the bane of
proof-of-stake systems. That problem is probably unsolvable in principle.
Why throws pearls at swine.
Why shoot at flies with a handgun?
Vitalik has replied to your comment on the page that I linked above,
so there's some bigger game for you.
To me that sounds he's mostly fine with centralization.