Ethereum Post-Merge — The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.
At Fifty Finney, we have observed with excitement how the merge has made the Ethereum token deflationary, improved the monetary policy of the Ethereum network, and increased the scaling potentials of the blockchain.
Source: Ultra Sound Money
We got even more excited when Vitalik Buterin published an updated roadmap for the Ethereum chain and how the chain can scale to onboard more users and hit critical mass.
Our previous newsletter touched on Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines(zk-EVMs) and Account Abstraction, some key upgrades featured in the updated roadmap published by Vitalik Buterin.
In today's newsletter, we thought it is befitting to provide a high-level insight into the five major milestones necessary for Ethereum to scale infinitely.
Let’s quickly go over the new Ethereum roadmap:
The Surge
The primary aim of the surge is to allow the Ethereum blockchain to scale to more than 100,000 transactions per second, majorly through layer 2’s and roll-ups. The surge begins with Ethereum Improvement Proposals(EIP) - 4844, also referred to as the implementation of proto-danksharding. The EIP-4844 proposal will allow the Ethereum blockchain to start accepting a new transaction format called blobs, which were previously unavailable on the Ethereum blockchain and are essential for sharding implementation.
Some other key features to be implemented in this segment are Optimistic & ZK-Rollups and zk-EVMs. By the time the surge is complete, the upgrade will enable even more affordable layer-2 blockchains, decrease the cost of rollups or bundled transactions, and simplify the process for users to run nodes that secure the Ethereum network.
The Scourge
As outlined in the updated roadmap, the scourge will ensure that transactions are fair and reliable, that there are neutral transaction issues, and that the problems of miner extractable value(MEV) are solved. This phase will ensure that users do not get front-run, bank-run, or sandwich attacked when executing transactions on the Ethereum chain. Since MEV typically leads to more expensive user transactions, eliminating MEV on the Ethereum chain will give rise to cheaper transactions and a better user experience for users.
The Verge
Previously, the verge was only focused on implementing Verkle Trees, which work similarly to a Merkle tree but have fewer witnesses. In the previous roadmap, the implementation of Verkle trees would mean that the Ethereum network is stateless, and node operators only needed a minimal part of the blockchain state to verify blocks reducing the storage requirements for participants on the network. In the updated roadmap published by Vitalik Buterin, the implementation of the Verkle tree is combined with SNARK and STARK-based verification systems to ensure that the process of verifying a block is considerably more manageable. Essentially, the verge will ensure that validators can easily verify blocks by downloading minimal aspects of the blockchain, performing a few computations, and verifying SNARKS.
The Purge
The purge will simply allow validators to operate with less storage space. In addition, the purge will see the implementation of history expiry (EIP-4444). EIP-4444 will ensure that nodes stop presenting data older than one year on the Ethereum peer-to-peer layer. By the time the purge is implemented, nodes will need far less hard drive storage and become more efficient as they reduce the costs of maintaining the storage facility of a node.
The Splurge
The Splurge addresses all other shortcomings of the Ethereum network. In the splurge, the significant proposals are the EIP-1559 and the specification of ERC-4337.
The EIP-1559 proposal seeks to reform the fee market, eliminating the first price auctions, the primary fee mechanism. The proposal introduces two main changes:
Replacing the existing gas limit with a combination of the current gas limit and 2x the current gas limit.
A burn structure which ensures that most transactions maintain a base fee similar to the current gas limits on the network.
ERC-4337 specification, on the other hand, allows for account abstraction without changes to the Ethereum protocol.
Final Words — Insights into Future State
At the latest ETH CC conference held in July, Vitalik Buterin Stated that the Ethereum blockchain is only 40% complete and that there is a long road ahead.
At Fifty Finney, we are excited to see the changes coming for transaction fees and other notable changes to the Ethereum blockchain that will make it more sustainable and attractive to millions of users worldwide.
We are excited to witness the evolution of Ethereum and look forward to the speed and affordability that implementing these upgrades will cause.
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