Vitalik introduces a new phase in the Ethereum roadmap: ‘The Scourge’

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has apparently added a new stage to the Ethereum technical roadmap, which intends to improve censorship resistance and decentralisation of the Ethereum network.

Buterin announced Ethereum network’s new intentions made introduction to “The Scourge” in a now expanded six-part technical roadmap in a November 5, 2022, Twitter post. Following Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network on September 15, 2022, the network entered the second stage — The Surge — with the goal of attaining 100,000 transactions per second utilizing rollups. The update to the technical roadmap is thought to have resulted in the addition of “The Scourge” as the new third stage, which is likely to be followed by the previously-known phases of The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.

Observations from the Ethereum roadmap, the purpose of The Scourge is to have neutral transaction inclusion while avoiding centralisation and other MEV protocol issues. According to reports, Ethereum’s co-founder aims to create a “credibly neutral” consensus layer as a result of miners exploiting transactions on the Ethereum network. Buterin has described a credible impartial approach for assuring no prejudice against persons. As a result, following the end of The Merge, Ethereum has taken into account a larger degree of centralisation and censorship. On October 15, 2022, Anthony Sassano, founder of The Daily Gwei and Ethereum bull, stated that censorship resistance is more important than scaling.

Furthermore, Buterin confirmed an upgrade to “The Verge,” which is intended to assure the incorporation of Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (SNARK) technology onto Ethereum. It is envisaged that SNARKs would add privacy-preserving capabilities to the Ethereum network, as well as the capacity to trace anonymous transactions.