jakiro
Author: Zeqing Guo, Jeffrey Hu
Looking back on history, it is not difficult to find that many of the cutting-edge technology discussions in the Ethereum developer community in the past have eventually evolved into current daily application products, from DEX, lending, to rollup, and DA.Of course, this also contains opportunities for investment layout.
So, at this point in early 2025, what valuable information can we capture from technical discussions such as Ethereum’s roadmap, recent DevCon, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade early next year?This article will try to sort out and discuss.
Ethereum’s roadmap
The Ethereum roadmap has always been an important reference for observing future development directions, including various stages such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, The Splurge and other stages.Vitalik also intensively posted articles in October to introduce the content of each stage.in:
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The Merge: The main thing is to the execution layer and the consensus layer, thus completing the transition from PoW to PoS.However, The Merge part also includes some improvements in the consensus protocol, including single time slot finality and lowering the threshold for validators.
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The Surge: The main discussion focuses on future scalability, improving from the bottom to better serve rollup.Among them, EIP-4844 has been launched, and the focus of future content includes PeerDAS and cross-rollup interactions that reduce node pressure.
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The Scourge: Some issues related to reducing MEVs include excessive concentration of builders and the capture of MEV values by large LSTs.
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The Verge: Including the conversion of the underlying layer from Merkle tree to Verkle tree and the Snarkization of EVM.
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The Purge: Reduce the pressure on data storage and state maintenance of Ethereum nodes by deleting or archiving historical data.At the same time, some technical debts will be cleared.
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The Splurge: Some more cutting-edge improvements, including EVM underlying layer, account abstraction, and other applications of cryptography (VDF, etc.).
We excerpt key improvements from these stages in the table below, introduce their main effects, and sort out the current progress.
DevCon
In addition to the roadmap, another information channel worth exploring is the recent Ethereum DevCon conference.The current problem and some possible solutions are discussed.
One of the most compelling topics on DevCon might belong to Beam Chain.From the slightly joking but inaccurate “Ethereum 3.0”, we can also see the community’s desire for new development directions in the future.Beam Chain has proposed many underlying improvements, including snarking the underlying layer, and improving block generation and staking.But the roadmap will take about 5 years to complete, so there is no need for much extra attention for the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjuenkv1zrw
Rollup related topics remain a hot topic during DevCon.The most discussed issues are the liquidity split between rollups and the difficulty of interaction that affects the user experience. Many speeches and panels have involved this issue or related solutions.In addition, the current technological maturity of L2 was also discussed in the conference, because currently only Optimism and Arbitrum have entered Stage 1 (licensed fraud proof), while most other L2 projects are still stuck in Stage 0 (centralized upgrade), without fraud proof, etc.), it needs to be synchronized with L1’s upgrade.
In addition, there are also concentrated discussions on link abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptography applications, future upgrades and other contents during DevCon.We will focus on the Pectra upgrade in the next section.
Pectra Upgrade
What is worth noting in the near future is the Ethereum Pectra upgrade expected to be completed in Q1 2025, which will also include a number of related transformations from the bottom layer to the user side.
EIP-7702: AA
The most relevant thing to users is EIP-7702. Based on the design referenced by EIP-3074, EIP-4337 has been further developed, giving all EOA accounts the ability to convert to smart contract accounts “temporarily”, which can further improve the user experience.(Sign multiple transactions at one time, 0 gas, etc.), but it may also increase security risks such as signature phishing. At the same time, EIP-7702 is also effective for all EOAs, so wallets and other products should also be transformed simultaneously to deal with this upgrade.However, overall, the activation of EIP-7702 will still bring new opportunities to all AA projects.For more information, please refer to our previous report.
EIP-7691: Increase the number of blobs
Pectra plans to adjust the target value of the number of blobs in each block from 3 to 6, and increase the maximum value of the number of blobs from 6 to 9.Blobs provide cheaper storage space for rollups. Increasing the number of blobs will further reduce the cost of rollups and enhance Ethereum’s DA competitiveness at the cost of increasing node operation.Therefore, it will be further beneficial to rollup projects.At the same time, the adjustment of the target value and maximum value also makes gas drop more rapidly when the blob is unused, and gas rises more slowly when the blob is full load.
EIP-7251: Increase staking cap
Pectra plans to increase the current staking cap of 32 ETH to 2048 ETH.Ethereum staking service providers and giant whale no longer need to divide their ETH into multiple nodes, but can be merged and placed in a little node to reduce the number of validators in staking.
Future Opportunities
All the above-mentioned technological changes or research discussions may bring about some new changes and opportunities.We summarize some of the more focused opportunities as follows.
Interaction between Rollups
Whether from the roadmap or many DevCon sharing, the liquidity interoperability and interactivity between Layer2 (rollup) are the most important concerns for developers.
At present, different solutions have been found in the community to solve the liquidity and interoperability problems between rollups from all levels.
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Based rollup: Since many L2s currently use their relatively centralized sequencer to achieve transaction ordering and then publish them on L1, it is impossible to quickly and timely interact.One solution is to implement the sequencing function through L1 to ensure the atomicity of the interaction between L2 using this sequencing function.
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Shared sequencer: In addition to based-rollup, another way to implement it is to share a set of sequencers in L2 to complete the interaction.
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Cross-chain intents: In addition to solving problems from the sequencer level, using intents to meet the needs of cross-rollups is also another solution.
At present, all the above solutions are being implemented in progress. For example, Spire Labs proposed that the Based Stack used to implement based rollup is expected to be launched in Q1 2025; Astria, Espresso and Polygon AggLayer related to Shared sequencer are being launched and iterated one after another;ERC-7683 was initially used by Unichain, Arbitrum, etc. to solve cross-chain liquidity problems; while the ERC-7802 launched by Optimism can implement SuperchainERC20 to support the unified asset standards and liquidity transfer within the superchain ecosystem.These different solutions have the potential to compete for winners in the market in 2025.
Account abstraction
Because all EOA account addresses are involved, enabling EIP-7702 will provide AA projects with a new opportunity.EIP-7702 may also build more complex cross-chain or multi-chain interaction functions based on functions such as chain abstraction and intents.However, since the ERC-4337’s market performance has been lukewarm, the Pectra upgrade may also be the last opportunity for AA track to verify PMF.
Therefore, after Pectra upgrades in the first quarter of next year, teams that are involved in EIP-7702 earlier and those who are prepared, such as Zerodev, may receive a new wave of growth, and the specific results will be explained soon.
Cryptography Applications
Whether it is the Ethereum Roadmap and DevCon discussion, cryptography-related technologies and applications are still a big topic.In terms of technology, the zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are gradually maturing, while ZKP combined with MPC, FHE, etc. may have more possibilities for application combinations.In addition, some cutting-edge cryptography discussions during DevCon, such as the Indistinguishable Confusion (iO), which is known as the jewel of the crown of cryptography, may also receive more attention.
In terms of application, cryptography technology will also have many opportunities on the consumer side.Verification applications including ZK Email (especially based on Aztec Noir) and zkTLS may be adopted more.In addition, recent incidents such as OFAC’s sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash may also be dispelled from some concerns about compliance with privacy applications.
