Get a glimpse of the new Ethereum roadmap

Author: Loopy

This morning, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released a new version of the Ethereum roadmap. However, this roadmap has not changed significantly from the past. He said that as Ethereum’s technical path continues to consolidate, there are relatively few changes.

Ethereum’s roadmap for 2024 highlights key features such as innovation, scalability, and decentralization. By establishing this major shift in PoS Consensus, Ethereum will solidify its position as the leading Blockchain platform ready to meet the evolving needs of its global user base.

The roadmap is designed around six core elements, which are as follows:

Merge (TheMerge)

This part was implemented back in September 2022, marking Ethereum’s move from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a Consensus Mechanism of PoS (PoS). This shift significantly drops the network’s energy consumption and provides a further enhanced foundation for the efficiency and scalability of the Blockchain.

Single Slot Finalization (SSF) plays an important role in post-Merge PoS (PoS) improvements, and SSF is the best way to address the weaknesses of current Ethereum PoS design.

SSF: The current EthereumConsensus protocol, Gasper, requires 64 to 95 slots to finalize the Block, which makes a significant portion of the chain susceptible to reorgs. To solve this problem, they proposed a protocol that could finalize a block within each time slot, paving the way for single-slot finality within Ethereum. Such an agreement will help increase the speed and economic security of transaction confirmations.

The Surge

This section aims to dramatically increase Ethereum’s throughput, with the goal of reaching 100,000 transactions per second. This scaling solution is critical to support global adoption and increase network capacity, spanning Ethereum and its Layer 2 network.

Significant progress has been made in this area. This includes improvements to EIP-4844 and Rollup itself.

Ethereum researchers are actively exploring new staking pool schemes to improve the decentralization, security, and efficiency of the Ethereum network. These proposals include simplifying the active validator cap and rotation, implementing single-slot finality (SSF), and introducing new concepts such as execution tickets.

Purge (The Scourge)

This topic focuses on addressing the risks of economic centralization within the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly those related to Miner Extractable Value (MEV) and Liquidity Staking Services. The goal is to maintain the decentralization nature and ensure equal and fair access to network resources.

Potential Improvement Directions:

Execution Ticket: Introducing a new mechanism called Execution Ticket, which is a potential improvement for EthereumConsensus Mechanism. This mechanism proposes an intra-protocol marketplace for buying and selling tickets that provide the right to propose future blocks. It consists of two random drawing processes, one for selecting beacon block proposers and provers, and the other for selecting executing block proposers and provers. The purpose of the execution ticket system is to separate the production of beacon blocks and MEV rewards, thereby isolating the decentralization of the validator set from these centralized forces. This article delves into the design and analysis of this mechanism, as well as some of the open questions that need to be addressed.

New validator mechanism: Vitalik Buterin has previously proposed a simplified active validator cap and rotation. This proposal aims to cap the number of active validators (e.g. 2^19 validators) while ensuring economic finality, low long-term variability in validator income, and maximizing simplicity. In order to deal with validators that exceed the upper limit, an improved version based on the “dynasty” mechanism is proposed, ensuring that only a certain number of validators are “awake” at any one moment, while maintaining security and low variability by rotating a portion of the sober validators each time the chain is completed. This proposal also discusses possible economic implications and alternatives.

Two-tiered staking: Two-tiered staking divides participants into tiers based on staking volume or other criteria. This increases Decentralization and reduces pressure on the Consensus layer through protocol and staking pool changes. This model is based on the way popular decentralization staking pools such as Lido and RocketPool work, with some improvements. These include improvements to the in-pool voting tool, increased competition between pools, and the introduction of enshrined delegation within the protocol. These proposals aim to increase the level of security and decentralization of the Ethereum network.

Frontier (TheVerge)

Enhancements in this area are aimed at making block validation more efficient. As transaction volumes continue to grow, these optimizations are critical to keeping Ethereum scalable. The “increase L1 gas limit” has been removed from the roadmap, and the gas limit can be increased at any time, indicating a flexible approach to network capacity management.

The latest development at the moment is that the Verkle tree is nearing completion.

Verkle Tree:

Verkle Tries is a data structure similar to Merkle Patricia Trees (MPT), which is the data structure used in Ethereum today. While Verkle Tries uses an MPT-like tree structure, the key difference is that each Node uses a special type of hash (called a vector commit) to commit to child Nodes. These vector promises provide several important long-term benefits and help pave the way for Ethereum’s statelessness.

Specific benefits include smaller proof sizes, enhanced Decentralization drop hardware requirements to run Node, faster synchronization of new Node to the network, scaling benefits that allow for higher gas limits, and greater compatibility with zk-EVM.

The Purge

The focus is on simplifying Ethereum’s protocol and making it more developer-friendly and accessible. This simplification is expected to improve the overall functionality and usability of the Ethereum network.

State Expiration Priority Drop: “State Expiration” is a relatively low priority and urgency item on the roadmap, especially given the evolution of stateless clients and PBS.

Drop emphasis on VDFs: This shift is due to cryptographic weaknesses identified in existing VDF constructs.

The Splurge

This category covers a variety of other aspects of the Ethereum ecosystem, from ecosystem growth and sustainability to human coordination. It reflects Ethereum’s commitment to nurturing and supporting its vibrant community.