Ethereum Roadmap Update
On December 30, 2023, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared the 2024 roadmap for Ethereum on the X social network, detailing upgrades and activities for the Ethereum network. According to a series of charts he presented, Ethereum’s focus for 2024 includes six key components: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.
- The Merge is emphasized as a pivotal part of the roadmap, aimed at maintaining a simple yet robust Proof of Stake (POS) consensus mechanism. This occurred in September 2022, merging the Ethereum mainnet with the POS beacon chain. Since the merger, Single Slot Finality (SSF) has been prioritized. SSF enhances the efficiency of Ethereum’s consensus mechanism by enabling blocks to be proposed and finalized within the same slot, reducing transaction latency. Following Ethereum’s transition from POW to POS, SSF serves as a key solution to Ethereum’s current weaknesses.
- The Surge aims to achieve a throughput of 100,000 transactions per second within Ethereum and L2 networks, enhancing blockchain scalability. Cross-rollup standards and interoperability have been highlighted by the Ethereum development team as areas for long-term improvement, with significant progress expected this year in EIP-4844 and rollup scalability itself.
- The Scourge focuses on mitigating risks associated with Maximum Extractable Value (MEV), liquidity staking pools, and rollups to address concerns of economic centralization within the Ethereum ecosystem. Earlier, Vitalik Buterin suggested reducing the cost of running nodes to meet these challenges. Currently, Verkle trees are ready, and validating blocks will involve downloading a few bytes of data, performing some basic calculations, and verifying Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge (SNARK). The network will continue to explore Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) verification precompiles towards a fully SNARKed Ethereum network.
- The Verge is designed to facilitate easier block validation and improve efficiency in this process. As on-chain transaction volume continues to grow, this optimization is crucial for maintaining Ethereum’s scalability. The roadmap has removed the content of “increasing L1 gas limits,” allowing gas limits to be increased as needed, indicating a flexible approach to network capacity management.
- The Purge aims to make the protocol more user-friendly and accessible to developers. This simplification will eliminate technical debt and limit network participation costs, expected to enhance the overall functionality and usability of the Ethereum network.
- The Splurge encompasses all other elements critical to Ethereum’s growth, from ecosystem growth and sustainability to human coordination, reflecting Ethereum’s commitment to nurturing and supporting its vibrant community.
Preview of EIP Proposals
Ethereum is set to undergo the Dencun hard fork upgrade in the first quarter of 2024, with core developers already having outlined a schedule for the implementation. Provided there are no significant obstacles, the following tentative timeline has been set for Ethereum’s public testnet:
- Goerli: January 17
- Sepolia: January 30
- Holesky: February 7
This will be Goerli’s final inclusion in the testing program as the network is planned for deprecation. This step is a crucial part of activating the Dencun strategy on the Ethereum network in January 2024, marking a substantial leap in its technical capabilities.
The core developers are also deliberating on the Prague/Electra upgrade, which is yet to be named. The Ethereum community is currently considering whether to focus on large-scale core features, which may require a year-long effort, or to pursue upgrades centered around multiple smaller improvements that could be realized in the latter half of 2024.
In essence, 2024 promises to be a year filled with groundbreaking improvement proposals for Ethereum. Here’s a look at some of the most anticipated proposals:
1. EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding)
As a major component of the Dencun upgrade and a focal point of market interest, EIP-4844’s goal is to reduce gas fees on L2 networks without compromising decentralization, particularly for rollup solutions.
The upgrade is expected to significantly lower data availability costs across all L2s, a development eagerly awaited by the market, as it promises to further reduce costs for end-users. EIP-4844 is anticipated to slash rollup gas fees by a hundredfold.
2. ERC-4337, ERC-6900 (Account Abstraction)
Account abstraction is a highly significant improvement proposal, encompassing ERC-4337 and its extension proposal, ERC-6900. Focused on the concept of smart accounts, this initiative has a profound impact on the end-user experience, as it aims to reduce transaction costs and ensure the security of social logins. ERCs (Ethereum Request for Comments) are a subset of EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), specifically targeting token standards within the Ethereum ecosystem to ensure interoperability. Unlike EIPs that modify the core protocol, ERCs typically do not require a hard fork.
The implementation of ERC-4337 is slated for March this year, signifying a key shift and crucial role in the concept of account abstraction for end-users. This abstraction will fundamentally transform how users perceive and interact with crypto wallets, making gas-less transactions a standard and secure social logins a new norm, thereby reshaping the Ethereum user experience from the ground up.
Traditionally, Ethereum has two types of accounts: Externally Owned Accounts (EOA), controlled by private keys, and contract accounts, governed by code. Account abstraction blurs this distinction, allowing users to create accounts that function more like smart contracts. This enhances the user experience and security, enabling more complex account logic such as multi-signature wallets or social recovery of lost keys.
ERC-6900 introduces the concept of “delegated transactions.” This standard does not require changes to Ethereum’s mainnet consensus and allows users to delegate others to send transactions on their behalf, such as approving a set of operations to save time and hassle.
3. EIP-1153 (Transient Storage Opcodes)
EIP-1153 is a part of the Dencun upgrade and is designed to introduce a new mechanism for handling temporary or transient storage during the execution of smart contracts. Traditional storage operations in Ethereum are permanent and require gas, which may be inefficient for temporary data not needed beyond the duration of a single transaction. EIP-1153 is an opcode that will enable smart contracts to use transient storage, which is cleared at the end of the transaction’s execution.
The Uniswap team made significant efforts to lobby for EIP-1153, hoping for its implementation in the Shanghai upgrade, but it did not gain enough support to reach a consensus among Ethereum core developers. This upgrade is expected to play an important role in enhancing the capabilities and efficiency of the Uniswap V4 protocol.
By enabling transient storage, EIP-1153 can reduce the gas costs associated with storing data during contract execution, offering developers greater flexibility in designing smart contracts. Additionally, by alleviating the burden of permanent storage and minimizing state bloat, EIP-1153 also contributes to the overall scalability of the Ethereum network.
4. EIP-4788 (Beacon Block Root Commits)
Ethereum can be likened to a vast library containing two main parts: the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), similar to a reading room where people read books (execute smart contracts), and the Beacon Chain, akin to the library’s catalog system tracking all books and their locations (Ethereum network’s consensus and coordination).
Before EIP-4788, these two components operated relatively independently. The EVM couldn’t directly access the latest catalog and had to rely on indirect methods to understand what was happening on the Beacon Chain. EIP-4788 proposes to integrate the beacon block root (a summary or the hash tree root of the parent block) into each EVM block. This is comparable to upgrading an outdated card catalog system in a library (inefficient and inaccurate) to a system that is real-time, accurate, and directly linked to the main database.
In this modern Ethereum ‘library’ system, every time a book is added, moved, or removed (updates on the Beacon Chain), the reader (EVM) gets immediate updates. The reader can trust the latest information received, and the library operations (such as executing smart contracts) are more consistent with the overall catalog system (the state of the consensus layer).
This process minimizes the need for trust, eliminating the reliance on external oracles to provide this data, thus reducing potential points of failure or manipulation. EIP-4788 introduces a protocol-level oracle, conveying the consensus state of Ethereum throughout the mainnet. This change is particularly beneficial for liquidity staking protocols like Lido, as well as smart contract-based bridges and re-staking solutions, as it allows these protocols to directly access critical data such as validator balances and statuses from the consensus layer, thereby enhancing their security and operational efficiency.
5. EIP-5656 (MCOPY Opcode)
The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) operates using a set of opcodes that dictate various operations. EIP-5656 introduces a new opcode named MCOPY, designed to optimize the process of copying data in memory during the execution of smart contracts.
In the current EVM structure, using existing opcodes to copy large data segments is inefficient. MCOPY offers a more effective method, expected to reduce the gas fees associated with these operations, while also enhancing performance. Faster memory operations mean quicker execution of contracts, providing developers with more tools to optimize their smart contracts, especially when dealing with large data structures or complex operations involving memory operations.
6. EIP-6780 (Restrict SELFDESTRUCT)
In the Ethereum blockchain, the SELFDESTRUCT opcode allows smart contracts to delete themselves from the blockchain. After execution, it removes the contract’s code and state storage space and sends any remaining ETH to a specified address. However, this feature has led to several issues, including complexities in state management and potential security vulnerabilities.
By restricting SELFDESTRUCT, Ethereum can better manage its state size, making the blockchain more stable and predictable. This is crucial for the network’s long-term scalability and maintenance, as it simplifies future upgrades to Ethereum.
In summary, the Ethereum 2024 roadmap update and key EIP proposals demonstrate the blockchain’s adaptability to industry changes and clearly showcase a vision for robust operation and enhanced scalability. It is evident that 2024 will be a significant year for Ethereum as it continues to explore innovations and technological advancements.
