Future Development of Ethereum: Analysis of The Surge Phase

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently published a series of articles on the future development of the Ethereum protocol, covering six main stages. This article will focus on analyzing the Surge stage and exploring how Ethereum can achieve improvements in scalability.

The main objective of The Surge

The core objectives of the Surge phase include:

• Improve the transaction processing capacity of Ethereum L1+L2 to over 100,000 TPS.
• Maintain decentralization and stability at the L1 layer.
• Ensure that at least some L2 solutions can inherit the core features of Ethereum.
• Maximize interoperability between L2s and build a unified ecosystem

Rollup-Centric Scaling Strategies

Rollup is a key technology in the Surge phase. By bundling transactions off-chain and then submitting them to the mainnet, it can significantly increase throughput while maintaining security and decentralization. Vitalik believes that Rollup can enhance Ethereum's scalability to over 100,000 TPS, which would be a transformative leap.

This year, Rollup has made significant progress: the launch of EIP-4844 blobs has greatly increased the data bandwidth of L1, and several EVM Rollups have entered the first phase. Each L2 exists as an independent shard, and the diversity of shard implementation has become a reality.

Data Availability Sampling ( DAS ) Development

DAS is another key technology of The Surge, aimed at solving data availability issues. It allows nodes to verify data without accessing the complete dataset, thereby improving scalability and efficiency.

Vitalik emphasized two forms of DAS: PeerDAS and 2D DAS. PeerDAS is expected to enhance the security of Rollups, while 2D DAS can handle larger amounts of data by expanding virtual blobs.

In the future, further improvements are needed for 2D DAS to prove its security attributes. Vitalik proposed three possible long-term paths: implementing the ideal 2D DAS, sticking to the use of 1D DAS, or abandoning DA completely in favor of the Plasma architecture.

Plasma and Other Scaling Solutions

In addition to Rollup, Plasma is also an important L2 scaling solution. It independently processes transactions by creating child chains and regularly submits summaries to the mainnet. Although its development progress lags behind Rollup, Vitalik still regards it as an important part of the Ethereum scaling toolkit.

In addition, improvements in data compression technology and cryptographic proofs also help to further enhance the efficiency of L2 solutions. These technological advancements will play a key role in achieving higher throughput on Ethereum.

Improvements in Cross-L2 Interoperability

One of the main challenges facing the current L2 ecosystem is the weak interoperability across L2s. To improve this issue, progress needs to be made in the following areas:

• Implement the address format of a specific blockchain
• Standardized payment requests for specific chains
• Develop cross-chain exchange and Gas payment protocol
• Improve the L2 light client
• Promote the concept of a shared token bridge
• Achieve synchronous composability

These improvements involve not only technical issues but also require extensive cooperation between L2, wallets, and L1.

Continue to Expand Ethereum L1

Vitalik believes that scaling L1 itself is still very important. He proposed three possible strategies:

1. Improve technology to enhance the verifiability of L1, thereby increasing the Gas limit.
2. Reduce the costs of specific operations and increase average capacity without increasing risk.
3. Implement native Rollups to create multiple parallel copies of the EVM

These strategies have their pros and cons and need to be weighed against each other.

The Balance of Decentralization and Security

While pursuing scalability, Ethereum has always adhered to the principle of decentralization. Rollups and DAS are seen as effective methods to maintain decentralization while increasing capacity. As Ethereum moves towards a rollup-centric future, ensuring the trustlessness of these systems becomes crucial.

Future Prospects of The Surge

After the Surge phase is completed, Ethereum is expected to achieve a highly scalable, decentralized, secure, and sustainable network. This vision not only includes technological upgrades but also involves improving development tools and cultivating a thriving dApp ecosystem.

Despite facing numerous challenges, if Ethereum can successfully achieve the goals of the Surge phase, it will further solidify its position as a core infrastructure of Web3, laying the foundation for the future of a decentralized internet.