Ethereum has been on a roll since 2022, when the first significant update, the Merge, changed the blockchain’s course forever. Ethereum started as most cryptocurrencies did, with proof of work as the consensus mechanism, but has soon after navigated the challenge of newness by introducing proof of stake. The main reason was the network’s congestion, which would raise fees and processing time too much for such an innovative ecosystem. For example, if you learned how to buy ETH a while ago, you’d be hit by gas fees of almost $200 between 2021 and 2022 due to network congestion.
The Merge was only the beginning of a new era of the Ethereum blockchain. The roadmap to change includes numerous other updates that might develop in the following five to ten years. Investors expect Ethereum to be one of the most important pioneers for crypto adoption, as it innovates technology and provides new ways of leveraging it. Here’s what’s next after the latest Ethereum update.
What was the Dencun update about?
The Dencun update involved two different upgrades that could manage Ethereum’s execution layers and consensus together. The Deneb and Cancun updates would help boost Ethereum scalability and lower transaction fees on the layer-2 solutions protocol.
While Deneb would settle on the consensus, Cancun would improve transactions on the execution layer. At the same time, an important improvement on the blockchain would include proto-danksharding, through which communicating layer-2 networks, like Polygon and Arbitrum, would allow for bulky data sets to be stored off-chain.
What were the benefits of the Dencun update?
The Dencun update stepped in to ensure Ethereum can improve its scalability, considering its previous challenges with it. The blockchain platform would impede transactions from happening faster, and centralized solutions like Visa would outperform it considerably. As a mere comparison, Visa could process up to 45,000 transactions per second, whereas Ethereum would only manage seven to 15 transactions.
That’s why the Dencun update was settled to offer the following benefits:
- Reduce fee on layer-2 solutions;
- Introduce danksharding or blob transactions to manage shards fees;
- Increase adoptions of NFTs or decentralized finance;
- Improve the developer experience;
- Enhance security through updates like EIP-4788 and EIP-6780;
So, what follows?
The Dencun update, which occurred this year on March 13th, has employed several improvements to the Ethereum blockchain. However, more is to come, and Ethereum users are most excited about the next upgrade, known as Pectra or Prague-Electra.
Just like the Dencun update, this one involves two different ones that merge together for a bigger impact on the network. The final improvement will be part of the Prague and Electra upgrades. The first will focus on changing the execution layers, whereas the latter will handle the consensus layer. Pectra is supposed to be deployed in the first quarter of 2025, during which time the Ethereum user experience might also improve due to additional improvements. One of them could be the EIP 3074, through which Ethereum wallets would allow users to sign transactions off fast. Other updates included may be the following:
- EIP-7251, through which the staking limit for validators will increase to reduce their admission rate;
- PeerDAS, or Peer Data Availability Sampling, will scale the EVM and improve the developer experience in both layers;
- EIP-2935 patches for block hashes and EIP-7702 for better account abstraction compatibility;
What’s next on the Ethereum roadmap?
There’s still plenty to do after Pectra. Vitalik Buterin is most excited about what follows, which includes the Verkle tree update. Its technology will allow stateless clients on Ethereum to verify new blocks with little storage space.
After that, a new step into the roadmap continues with the Verge update, this is the fourth update on the roadmap and will make the process of verifying blocks easier. This update will be one of the most complex to manage on the roadmap since the complicated cryptography behind it requires lots of testing and research. However, it’s going to break the internet when developers deploy it.
The next update is the Purge, which will try to reduce the computational costs of running nodes. Although staking is now a more useful and energy-efficient method compared to mining, its costs and requirements are still considerable for regular users. Improvements like history expiration will allow some nodes to avoid storing previous blocks’ data.
Finally, the Splurge will handle everything else that was not included in one of the previous updates. For example, a few improvement proposals that couldn’t be categorized will end up here, as well as final touches that finish up the roadmap just well.
Ethereum is an innovative blockchain
Although many other blockchains are testing new updates and applications, Ethereum is the most eager to change and provide some of the best products and services to the market. Many believe that one day, Ethereum will overthrow Bitcoin in terms of value and utility significantly since users can leverage it as a means of exchange and an ecosystem for learning how to work with decentralized applications.
Vitalik Buterin has indeed used Bitcoin as a source of inspiration when creating Ethereum, but his visions included much more than a simple store of value. That’s why Bitcoin and Ethereum parted ways, because their best features included different things. However, Ethereum is the second-most traded cryptocurrency, so we can say it got quite successful over the years.
Ethereum has started to collaborate with centralized financial tools as well as businesses in order to spread its knowledge and find ways to develop. Ethereum and Visa have been working together for some time, for example, for the company to bring decentralization closer to regular use and making adoption more approachable.
What do you think about the next Ethereum update?
Since the Merge, Ethereum has been improving, making it one of the most innovative networks on the market. The Dencun update introduced new concepts, such as proto-danksharding, which would improve scalability and handle blobs. After the Dencun update, the Pectra one follows, and it will manage Ethereum layers and improve scalability.