- Vitalik Buterin presents Ethereum’s 2024 roadmap, focusing on scalability, security, and efficiency.
- Innovations include The Meltdown, The Boom, The Purge, and more, seeking to robust Ethereum and enhance its cyberpunk ethos.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has unveiled Ethereum’s updated 2024 roadmap, which continues last year’s ambitious plans with some refinements and continued emphasis on certain key areas.
The roadmap focuses on six key components – The Merge (The Merge), The Surge (The Surge), The Scourge (The Scourge), The Verge (The Verge), The Purge (The Purge) and The Splurge (The Splurge) .
By popular demand, an updated roadmap diagram for 2023! pic.twitter.com/oxo58A2KuG
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 30, 2023
Each of these elements plays a crucial role in shaping the future of the Ethereum network, with the goal of making it more robust, scalable, efficient and aligned with its original cyberpunk ethos.
The Merge
This crucial component was already implemented in 2022 with the shift from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS)consensus mechanism . The Merge marked a significant reduction in Ethereum’s energy consumption and laid the groundwork for future upgrades. Buterin emphasized the importance of maintaining a simple and resilient PoS consensus, stressing its importance for network stability and efficiency.
The Surge
The Surge seeks to significantly improve Ethereum’s scalability by implementing data fragmentation. Fragmentation involves splitting the blockchain into smaller segments, which can process transactions and store data more efficiently.
This upgrade is expected to increase network capacity and reduce transaction costs, contributing to Ethereum’s scalability goals, including achieving 100,000 transactions per second on Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks.
The Scourge
Addressing security concerns is a priority in The Scourge. It focuses on mitigating potential security vulnerabilities and improving the robustness of the network. This includes exploring new consensus mechanisms and improving the security of smart contracts, as well as addressing issues related to Miner Extractable Value (MEV) and liquidity pooling.
The Verge
This component seeks to simplify user experiences and improve developer tools. The goal is to simplify the Ethereum interface and improve the development process for decentralized apps (dApps) and other applications. Easier block verification is part of this update, making the network more accessible and easier to use.
The Purge
In the Purge, the focus is on cleaning up the Ethereum protocol by removing obsolete or unnecessary code. This streamlining aims to improve the overall efficiency of the network and reduce potential security risks associated with old or disused code. It is a process of continuous refinement to keep the network agile and efficient.
The Splurge
The Splurge is essentially an investment in the future of Ethereum. It includes research and development of emerging technologies and potential breakthroughs for the Ethereum network. This includes exploring zero-knowledge proofs (zero-knowledge proofs), rollups and other privacy-enhancing solutions. It is a commitment to innovation and staying at the forefront of blockchain technology.
In addition to these technical updates, Buterin also emphasized the need to revive Ethereum’s original cyberpunk vision. This vision includes a focus on decentralized applications, privacy protection and peer-to-peer communication.
The integration of technologies such as rollups and zero-knowledge proofs is seen as a step toward restoring this ethos and enabling the development of more private and censorship-resistant applications on Ethereum.
Finally, Buterin endorsed single-space finality (SSF) as the simplest way to address many of the current weaknesses in Ethereum’s PoS design. Advances made in Layer 2 networks and Verkle tree implementations were also praised, indicating a healthy development trajectory for the network.
The Ethereum 2024 roadmap, as outlined by Buterin, indicates a continued commitment to improving the scalability, efficiency, security and usability of the network. It also reflects a desire to return to the network’s original principles of decentralization and privacy, ensuring Ethereum’s relevance and utility in the evolving digital landscape.
