• Vitalik Buterin publishes revised roadmap for 2024
• Adjustments remain manageable
• There is no specific timetable
Ethereum founder and 2024 roadmap
Vitalik Buterin, founder of the largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, updated the roadmap for the Ethereum blockchain shortly before the end of 2023. Via X-Thread, he provides information about crucial priorities and developments planned for 2024.
By popular demand, an updated 2023 roadmap infographic! pic.twitter.com/oxo58A2KuG
– Vitalik.with (@VitalikButerin) December 30, 2023
However, according to Buterin, adjustments to the roadmap were limited: “As Ethereum's technical trajectory continues to consolidate, there are relatively few changes. I will go over the most important changes,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). The six main points of the roadmap are Merge, Surge, Scourge, Edge, Purge, and Splurge. Each of these points has a specific function in the continuous improvement and development of Ethereum, as the financial news portal explains. However, the integration is particularly important because it aims to create a robust and simple Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus process. The transition from the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to PoS has significantly reduced energy consumption in the network. This significantly increased the sustainability and efficiency of the platform.
advertisement
Buying Bitcoin is very complicated and time consuming.
» Here you can easily buy and sell Bitcoin
These changes have been made to the roadmap
First, Buterin emphasizes the importance of single-slot finality (SSF) at the “merge” point. “The role of single-slot finality (SSF) in improving post-merge PoS is becoming increasingly clear. SSF is the easiest way to address many of the existing weaknesses in Ethereum PoS design,” he said. The SSF aims to ensure that changes to the blockchain are irreversible by removing at least 33 percent of the total ETH through burning, Financial News explains.
There has been significant progress in “scaling up” (cumulative scaling) in the past year, both with EIP-4844 and with the cumulative groups themselves, Buterin explains in his post. According to the roadmap, the Surge category's goal is to achieve 100,000 transactions per second and more (for clusters). “Comprehensive standards and interoperability have also been highlighted as an area for long-term improvement,” explains Buterin.
The Scourge aims to ensure the neutral, trustworthy and trustworthy encryption of transactions and avoid centralization and other protocol risks through MEV. “The scourge has been somewhat redesigned. It is now about combating the economic centralization of Proof of Stake in general, in two main areas: (i) MEV, (ii) general issues related to standardization,” Buterin said.
Verge's goal is to simplify block verification — “download N bytes of data, do some basic calculations, SNARK, and you're done,” the roadmap says. Here too, significant progress has been made over the past year, as Buterin explains: “Significant progress on the edge; Ferkle trees are almost ready for listing. The phrase 'L1 gas limit increased' has been removed to emphasize that the limit can be lifted *at any time*; there is no Need to wait for full SNARKs, especially for small increments.
The goal of purging is to simplify the protocol, remove technical debt, and reduce the cost of network participation by deleting obsolete data. Modifications here, according to Buterin: “‘Expiration of Mandate’ has been trimmed to reflect the general consensus that this is a low-priority, non-urgent item, particularly in light of stateless clients and enforcement/PBS tickets.”
Splurge is ultimately about “fixing everything else,” as the roadmap explains. Here, the size of the VDFs has been reduced to reflect the temporary reduced importance resulting from poor encryption in existing designs, explains Buterin. “Deep coding (e.g., obfuscation) and time-delayed encoded memory sets have been added to reflect the growing research interest in these topics.”
The Ethereum founder did not provide a specific timeline for changes to the ecosystem, but the changes are roughly ranked in order of priority, as The Block explains.
Finanzen.ch editorial team
