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Vitalik Buterin on The Splurge: Exploring Ethereum’s Future
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The crypto sector is a dynamic environment. Projects can’t nod off and expect to remain relevant. That’s why Ethereum has an ongoing roadmap. Vitalik Buterin and his team keep building.
This Ethereum roadmap has six steps, and The Splurge is step six. We already covered the previous five steps. So, what is The Splurge all about?
What Is The Splurge?
In a nutshell, The Splurge is all about the upgrades that don’t fit in one of the previous five upgrades. In other words, it should fix everything else. Here are the key goals for The Splurge:
- Reach a stable ‘endgame state’ for EVM.
- Offer more secure and convenient accounts with account abstraction. This means that you can set your own rules for wallet management. For example, this allows for ‘free’ or sponsored transaction fees.
- Enhance the transaction fee economics, increase scalability, and reduce risks.
- Research advanced cryptography to improve Ethereum.
As always, for more detailed explanation, please read Vitalik Buterin’s original article The picture below shows the roadmap of The Splurge.
Source: Buterin’s article on The Splurge
EVM Improvements
The current EVM needs an overhaul. One of the first improvements is EOF or EVM Object Format. Integration of EOF is in the plans for the next hard fork. EOF adds a lot of code to EVM implementations. However, it offers benefits in the form of simplifications:
- Higher-level languages.
- EVM implementations.
This would warrant more efficient L2s. It’s also interesting to see how Buterin changed his mind over time about EVM upgrades. See the X post below.
IMO the best argument against any EVM improvements is that it’s much harder to remove EVM features than to add them, and so a culture where ongoing “EVM improvements” are expected means EVM keeps complexifying.
Some EVM changes are good, but that’s the tradeoff to weigh against.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 12, 2022
Account abstraction
Account abstraction (AA) has been around since 2015. Since then, its goal has increased in size. For example, allowing to pay for transaction fees in ERC-20 tokens instead of $ETH.
So, the importance is to find the right balance between security and convenience in AA. See the picture below.
MPC (multi-party computation) plays an important role in this process.
EIP-1559 Improvements
An EIP is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal. These proposals allow community members to vote on how Ethereum’s development. EIP-1559 has been active since 2021. It improved the average block inclusion time. However, this EIP needs some improvements. Buterin describes these improvements in detail in his article. For example, multidimensional gas plays an essential role.
Verifiable delay functions (VDFs)
Verifiable delay functions or VDFs protect blocks from manipulation. The idea is to delay certain information. This way, bad actors can’t benefit from an unfair advantage. You can only compute it sequentially. You can’t speed up the process by making use of parallel computers. For instance, it’s used to increase the security of proposer selection.
Obfuscation and One-Shot Signatures: The Far Future of Cryptography
This is about a transparent virtual computer. This computer should have various functions and features. For example, you can’t:
- Shut it down.
- Censor it or tamper with it.
If privacy is out of this equation, a blockchain can handle this. However, if you want to include privacy, there are projects around that offer this. They also need to offer trustless third parties.
Ethereum makes full use of ZK-SNARKS. Another protocol is fully homomorphic encryption or FHE. However, both have limitations. So, a third protocol, indistinguishability obfuscation, seems to be the solution. However, it’s very new and still requires lots of research. On the other hand, it’s more powerful than the other two combined.
It also requires the use of quantum one-shot signatures. For this, you need a quantum computer. So, there’s still a lot to do in this field. See the picture below.
Conclusion
The Future of Ethereum is an ongoing project. It follows a six-step roadmap. We already covered five parts of this roadmap. The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, and The Purge. Today we covered the last step, The Splurge.
Disclaimer
The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. Any information or strategies are thoughts and opinions relevant to accepted levels of risk tolerance of the writer/reviewers, and their risk tolerance may be different from yours.
We are not responsible for any losses that you may incur as a result of any investments directly or indirectly related to the information provided. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are high-risk investments, so please do your due diligence.
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October 31, 2024 at 05:49AM
October 31, 2024 at 05:50AM
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