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Ethereum Roadmap Update
On December 30, 2023, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared the 2024 Ethereum roadmap on the X social network and introduced in detail the upgrade and activities of the Ethereum network.According to a series of charts he listed, Ethereum’s continued focus in 2024 includes 6 main components: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge and The Splurge.
(1) The Merge is emphasized as a key part of the roadmap, aiming to maintain a simple and resilient POS consensus mechanism. It took place in September 2022, integrating the Ethereum mainnet with the POS beacon chain.Since merger, single slot finality (SSF) roles will be performed first.SSF can make Ethereum’s consensus mechanism more efficient in verifying blocks, and blocks can be proposed and finalized in the same slot, thereby reducing transaction delays.After Ethereum transitions from POW to POS consensus mechanism, single slot finality (SSF) will serve as a key solution to Ethereum’s current weaknesses.
(2) The Surge aims to achieve a throughput of 100,000 transactions per second in Ethereum and L2 networks, while improving the scalability of blockchain.Cross-rollup standards and interop have been highlighted by the Ethereum development team as areas of long-term improvements, and significant progress will be made this year in the scalability of EIP-4844 and rollup themselves.
(3) The Scourge focuses on alleviating risks related to maximum extractable value (MEV), liquid staking pools and rollups to address concerns about economic centralization within the Ethereum ecosystem.Vitalik Buterin had earlier suggested reducing the cost of running nodes to meet related challenges.Currently, the Verkle tree is ready, and the verification block will involve downloading only some bytes of data, performing some basic calculations, and verifying a concise, non-interactive knowledge argument (SNARK).The network will continue to explore Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) verification precompilation to achieve a fully SNARK-based Ethereum network.
(4) The Verge aims to promote easier block verification and improve the efficiency of block verification.As on-chain transaction volume continues to grow, this optimization is crucial to maintaining Ethereum’s scalability.The roadmap removes the content of “adding L1 gas limits” so that gas limits can be increased at any time, indicating a flexible approach to network capacity management.
(5) The Purge is designed to make the protocol easy to use, making it more developer-friendly and accessible.This simplification will eliminate technical debt and limit network participation costs, which is expected to increase the overall functionality and availability of the Ethereum network.
(6) The Splurge covers all other crucial elements for Ethereum’s growth, such as from ecosystem growth and sustainability to human coordination, reflecting Ethereum’s efforts to cultivate and support its vibrant communitiespromise.
EIP improvement proposal prospect
Ethereum will usher in the Dencun hard fork upgrade in the first quarter of 2024. Ethereum core developers have formulated a Dencun hard fork upgrade schedule.Without major problems, Ethereum’s public test network will be tentatively carried out according to the following schedule:
Goerli: January 17
Sepolia: January 30
Holesky: February 7
This will be the last time Goerli is included in the test scheme, as the network is about to be deprecated.This move is part of the Dencun strategy activated on the Ethereum network in January 2024, marking a significant advance in its technological capabilities.
The core developers also discussed the unspecified Prague/Electra upgrade.The Ethereum community is considering whether to focus on large core features (which may take a year of effort) or upgrade around multiple smaller improvements (this will be possible in the second half of 2024).
Overall, 2024 will be the year for Ethereum to achieve groundbreaking improvement proposals. Here are some improvement proposals worth paying attention to:
(1) EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding)
EIP-484 is the highlight of many proposals for Dencun upgrades, and is also the most concerned proposal in the market. Its main purpose is to reduce gas costs on the L2 network without sacrificing decentralization, especially for rollup solutions.
The Dencun upgrade will reduce the cost of all L2s in terms of data availability, which is something the market is looking forward to, as the cost of end users will be further reduced.EIP-4844 is a transformative enhanced proposal that is expected to reduce the gas costs of rollup by 100 times.
(2) ERC-4337, ERC-6900 (Account abstraction)
Account abstraction is also a very important proposal for improvement, including ERC-4337 and its extension proposal ERC-6900.Account abstraction centers on the concept of smart accounts, has a significant impact on the end user experience and will reduce transaction costs and ensure social login security.ERC is a subset of EIP, specifically targeting the token standard in the Ethereum ecosystem.It defines rules for token execution to ensure interoperability.Unlike EIP that modify the core protocol, ERC usually does not require hard forking.
ERC-4337 will be held in March this year, and the concept of account abstraction will bring important changes and key roles to end users.Account abstraction will revolutionize how users perceive and interact with crypto wallets, making gas-free transactions the standard, while making secure social login a new norm, fundamentally reshaping Ethereum’s user experience.
Traditionally, Ethereum has two types of account: an external account controlled by a private key (EOA) and a code-controlled contract account.Account abstract blurs this distinction, allowing users to create accounts that are more like smart contracts.It enhances user experience and security and allows for more complex account logic, such as multi-signature wallets or social recovery of lost keys.
ERC-6900 proposes the concept of “delegated transaction”.This standard does not require changes to Ethereum’s mainnet consensus, which allows users to delegate representatives to send transactions, for example, approve a set of operations to save time and hassle.
(3) EIP-1153 (instantaneous storage of opcode)
EIP-1153 is part of the Dencun upgrade, aiming to introduce a new mechanism to handle temporary or temporary storage during smart contract execution.Traditional storage operations on Ethereum are permanent and require gas consumption, which may be invalid for temporary data that does not require longer than a transaction.EIP-1153 is an opcode that will allow smart contracts to use instantaneous storage, i.e. clear the storage at the end of transaction execution.
The Uniswap team has lobbyed for EIP-1153 and hoped that it would be implemented in the Shanghai upgrade, but failed to receive enough support to reach a consensus among Ethereum core developers.This upgrade is expected to play an important role in improving the capabilities and efficiency of the Uniswap V4 protocol.
By enabling temporary storage, EIP-1153 can reduce the gas costs associated with storing data during contract execution and provide developers with greater flexibility in designing smart contracts.EIP-1153 also contributes to the overall scalability of the Ethereum network by reducing the burden of permanent storage and minimizing state swelling.
(4) EIP-4788 (Beacon Block Root Submission)
Ethereum is like a huge library, it contains two main parts: the first part is the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), which allows people to read books like a reading room (executing smart contracts); the second part is the beacon chain, track all books and their locations like a library’s catalog system (consensus and coordination of the Ethereum network).
Prior to EIP-4788, the operation of these two parts was relatively independent.EVM cannot directly access the latest directory, it must rely on indirect methods to understand what is happening in the beacon chain.EIP-4788 proposes to place the beacon block root (the hash tree root of the digest or the parent block) into each EVM block.This is equivalent to transferring outdated card archiving systems in the library (inefficient and low accuracy) to systems with real-time, accurate and directly linked to the main database.
In the modern library system of Ethereum, the reader (EVM) can get instant update information every time a book is added, moved, or deleted (beacon chain update).Readers can trust the latest information obtained, and library operations (such as executing smart contracts) are more consistent with the overall directory system (state of the consensus layer).
All of the above processes occur in a way that trust needs are minimized, eliminating the need for external oracles that provide this data, thereby reducing potential failures or manipulation points.EIP-4788 introduces protocol-level oracles, conveying the consensus status of Ethereum throughout the main network.This change is especially beneficial for liquid staking protocols such as Lido, as well as smart contract-based bridge and restaking solutions, as it allows these protocols to access critical data such as validator balances and state directly from the consensus layer, thus improving itsSafety and operational efficiency.
(5) EIP-5656 (MCOPY opcode)
EVM operates using a set of operation codes that determine various operations.EIP-5656 introduces a new opcode called MCOPY that will optimize the process of copying data in memory during execution of smart contracts.
When using existing opcodes in the current EVM architecture, it is inefficient to copy large data segments.MCOPY provides a more efficient method that is expected to reduce gas fees associated with these operations while improving performance.Faster memory operations mean faster contract execution, and developers will have more tools to optimize their smart contracts, especially when dealing with large data structures or complex operations involving memory operations.
(6) EIP-6780 (restricted self-destruction)
In the Ethereum blockchain, self-destruction opcode allows smart contracts to delete themselves from the blockchain.After execution, it will delete the storage space of the contract code and state and send the remaining ETH of the contract to the specified address.However, this feature leads to several issues, including the complexity of state management and potential security vulnerabilities.
By limiting self-destruction, Ethereum can better manage its state scale, making the blockchain more stable and predictable.This is crucial for long-term scalability and maintenance of the network, as it will simplify future Ethereum upgrades.
In summary, Ethereum’s 2024 roadmap update and important EIP proposals show the adaptability of Ethereum blockchain to industry changes, and clearly demonstrates a clear vision for a robust operation and improving scalability.It can be foreseeable that 2024 will be an important year for Ethereum to continue to explore innovation and technological upgrading and improvement.
