Ethereum Releases 2024 Roadmap, Progressing Continuously towards Global Settlement Layer
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, has announced the latest roadmap for Ethereum in 2024 on Twitter. With the gradual stabilization of the Ethereum architecture, there will be fewer changes compared to before. The focus this year will be on improving the connection and overall performance of Rollups and Ethereum to face the competition in terms of TPS advantages.
Vitalik stated that with the gradual confirmation of the development direction and architecture of Ethereum, there haven’t been many major changes. The development will continue to proceed in six phases simultaneously, including:
1. The Merge: Transitioning the consensus mechanism from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
2. The Surge: Improving network scalability through Rollups to achieve 100,000 TPS.
3. The Scourge: Solving MEV (Miner Extractable Value) and centralization issues in liquidity staking.
4. The Verge: Simplifying block verification processes and replacing Merkle Tree with SNARK-calculated Verkle Tree.
5. The Purge: Simplifying protocols, clearing technical debt, and introducing data expiration to reduce participation costs.
6. The Splurge: Addressing other issues such as account abstraction, optimizing EVM, improving EIP-1559, VDFs, and delay-encrypted mempools.
The Merge phase is already halfway completed, as Ethereum successfully transitioned to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism in 2021. The remaining part aims to achieve transaction finality within 15 seconds by modifying the consensus mechanism.
Currently, it takes about 15 minutes for transactions on the Ethereum network to achieve finality, which is approximately 64 to 95 slots (each slot being about 12 seconds) to wait for enough nodes (2/3) to verify block contents. This inconvenience poses challenges for practical applications.
The goal of the second half of The Merge is to improve the finality speed of the Ethereum network, achieving transaction finality within a single slot, which is known as Single Slot Finality (SSF). This requires considering the hardware specifications and the number of validators to complete a large number of node verifications in a short period. Some developers suggest increasing the staking threshold from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH or setting a committee to limit the total number of nodes with verification power. However, these methods may increase centralization to some extent. The implementation of SSF is still under discussion and is expected to be updated after other major upgrades such as Danksharding.
The Surge phase focuses on improving the performance of Rollups to increase Ethereum’s scalability. Instead of using state sharding, Ethereum will adopt Rollups as a means of expansion, with the Ethereum mainnet serving as the settlement layer. EIP-4844 aims to change the data storage method from calldata to blob, reducing the on-chain cost of submitting transaction information in Layer2.
The Scourge phase, introduced at the end of last year, focuses on solving economic issues under the PoS consensus mechanism, including MEV and centralization issues in liquidity staking. Proposed solutions for the MEV problem include separating the submitter from the proposer (Proposal-Builder Separation, PBS) through a public market mechanism to minimize and transparentize MEV. However, non-consensus layer tools like MEV-Boost, developed by the Flashbots team, have already been introduced as transitional measures. The centralization issue in liquidity staking is still in the planning stage, with potential solutions exploring hard caps.
The Verge phase aims to simplify the block verification process and reduce node storage requirements. Verkle Tree will replace Merkle Tree, and stateless client verification will allow nodes to complete block verification without storing the complete transaction history. This reduces the block space consumption, hardware requirements, and increases decentralization. Future updates may also include zk-SNARK proof mechanisms to enhance resistance against quantum computing.
The Purge phase will introduce the state expiry standard EIP-4444, allowing Ethereum clients to clear historical data stored for more than a year and store complete transaction information in decentralized storage layers like Arweave. This reduces the hardware requirements for node storage. However, if Verkle Tree and PBS are successful in reducing hardware requirements, the importance of EIP-4444 may be lowered. Therefore, the Ethereum Foundation has postponed its implementation.
The Splurge phase focuses on optimizing other aspects of Ethereum, including account abstraction, improving the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and introducing features like Verifiable Delay Function (VDF), deep crypto, and delay-encrypted mempools. These issues are not the most urgent for the development team but are seen as the finishing touches.
The Ethereum ecosystem’s development direction is gradually becoming clear and specific compared to the early roadmap. While there are still many issues to discuss, such as centralization in liquidity staking or the specific implementation of SSF, a consensus is being reached on the overall architecture. The Ethereum Foundation is expected to gradually complete the to-do list.
From the roadmap, it can be seen that the Ethereum development team is primarily focused on EIP-4844 in The Surge phase. With competition from other chains and the need for data availability, scalability is the most important task for the Ethereum Foundation at this stage, and the development of Rollups is of utmost urgency.
The vision of Ethereum, as evident from the roadmap, is to become a global settlement layer. Whether it is abandoning the vision of state sharding and high TPS for the mainnet in favor of strengthening links with Rollups, or continuously trying to reduce hardware requirements to increase decentralization, Ethereum is clearly shifting from being a world computer to a world settlement layer. The Ethereum Foundation is actively working towards this vision.
Note: The article mentions various EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), such as EIP-4444 and EIP-4844, as well as other terms like MEV, PBS, and Rollups, which are essential to the Ethereum ecosystem’s development.
