The Future Development of Ethereum 6 The Splurge Achieving Endgame State through Diversified Puzzle Pieces
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum future blueprint has reached its sixth chapter, “The Splurge.” This project is primarily designed to achieve “other” diverse and unique goals that do not fit into larger subcategories.
Buterin stated that since its inception in 2013, Ethereum has undergone multiple upgrades, with each update driving its leadership position in smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). “The Splurge” is the latest plan starting in 2023, dedicated to enhancing the performance and scalability of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and addressing current transaction fee economics and cryptographic technology issues.
The key goals of The Splurge are as follows:
1. Enhancing the performance and stability of the EVM: The goal is to achieve a “final state” that not only supports the current smart contract ecosystem but also lays the foundation for future efficient cryptographic functionalities.
2. Built-in support for account abstraction: Promoting more secure and convenient account management for the benefit of every user.
3. Optimizing transaction fee mechanisms: Improving scalability and reducing risks through enhancements.
4. Exploring advanced cryptographic technologies: Utilizing the latest encryption technologies to make the Ethereum protocol more competitive in the long run.
Improving the EVM: From efficiency to cryptographic functionalities
What are the current issues?
The current EVM faces challenges in static analysis, which not only impacts performance but also makes code verification and continuous expansion difficult. Additionally, the EVM’s efficiency is low when performing many advanced cryptographic operations unless specifically supported by precompilation.
What is the proposed solution?
To address these challenges, the Ethereum Object Format (EOF) is set to be introduced. EOF features include:
– Isolating code and data to reduce unnecessary resource consumption.
– Disabling dynamic jumps and only allowing static jumps.
– Introducing explicit subroutine mechanisms to further enhance performance.
In the future, the EVM will also incorporate EVM Modular Arithmetic Extensions (EVM-MAX) and Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) capabilities, significantly improving the efficiency of cryptographic algorithms. This will enable Ethereum to easily implement efficient cryptographic techniques such as Montgomery multiplication and elliptic curve cryptography.
Account abstraction: Support for multi-functional accounts
Limitations of the current account verification methods
The current Ethereum account system only supports ECDSA verification, and account abstraction aims to integrate more verification methods into the protocol. This allows multi-signature wallets, social recovery wallets, and other features to become a reality, making it more convenient for users to switch keys and enhance security.
Progress on ERC-4337 and EIP-7702
As part of the next hard fork plan, EIP-7702 will expand account abstraction capabilities, benefiting all accounts including EOA. ERC-4337 introduces dual-stage processing for verification and execution to address potential denial-of-service attack risks and introduces “Paymaster” and “Aggregator” functionalities to support more flexible account management.
Improving EIP-1559: Multi-dimensional fuel mechanism
What are the current issues?
Although EIP-1559 introduced in 2021 improved average block processing speed, there is still room for improvement. The current formula results in approximately 50-53% block utilization, and adaptability in extreme cases is still insufficient. To address these issues, the concept of “multi-dimensional fuel” is introduced to adapt to different resource demands, reducing fuel cost volatility.
Proposals: EIP-7706 and EIP-7623
These proposals introduce separate fuel prices for different resource dimensions to improve resource utilization by addressing the gap between average and worst-case scenarios. The multi-dimensional fuel mechanism will also help Ethereum handle future demands for computational resources, such as STARK hash trees, and make Ethereum’s resource requirements more predictable.
Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF): Improving randomness generation
What are the current issues?
Currently, Ethereum’s randomness generation relies on the RANDAO method, which has some manipulation risks. Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF) are a potential solution to this problem, reducing the manipulability of random data generation through their sequentially executed properties.
Operation mechanism and progress
The challenge of VDF is to avoid hardware acceleration and unexpected parallel optimizations while maintaining the credibility of randomness while ensuring practicality. In the future, developing VDF-specific ASICs may be a viable direction, but extensive research and testing are still required.
Obfuscation techniques and one-time signatures: The future of cryptography
Security requirements for multi-party applications
As technology advances, the demand for smart contracts and multi-party applications is rapidly growing. Obfuscation techniques and one-time signatures offer a highly promising solution, enabling protocols to have nearly perfect security and privacy protection.
Application potential of encryption technologies
In the future, with the maturity of Indistinguishability Obfuscation and one-time signature technologies, Ethereum will be able to be applied in a wider range of privacy and security applications, including private EVMs, decentralized anonymous voting, and quantum-secure cryptographic systems, fundamentally changing the application scope of Ethereum in privacy, decentralization, and multi-party trust.
The launch of The Splurge project marks a comprehensive upgrade for Ethereum in terms of performance, account management, security, and scalability. These proposals not only address technical challenges in the current protocol but also open up infinite possibilities for Ethereum’s future applications and versatility.
