Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is optimistic about the upcoming year and expects to achieve a significant milestone as far as the Ethereum roadmap is concerned.
Additionally, the Ethereum developer has confirmed that the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4884 will be implemented in 2023, although it was previously removed from the Shanghai upgrade scheduled for March.
Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase, asked users on New Year’s Eve what they were optimistic about in 2023 in a tweet. In response, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed optimism that the Ethereum roadmap’s “basic roll-up scaling” milestone would be met.
This, he explained, meant the release of The Surge-related Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4884.
As it had been reported by Cointelegraph late last year, EIP-4884 was intended to be included in the Shanghai update, which would include “proto-danksharding” to improve layer-2 rollup scalability via Surge.
To put it plainly if you didn’t follow back then and are not up to speed, EIP-4884 is a proposal to improve Ethereum. It was originally planned to be included in the Shanghai update, which is an upcoming Ethereum update.
The Shanghai update would include a new feature known as “proto-danksharding,” which is intended to improve the scalability of Surge, Ethereum’s layer-2 roll-up technology. The ability of a system to handle an increasing amount of work, or in this case, a growing number of transactions, is what is referred to as scalability.
The goal of EIP-4884 and the Shanghai update is to improve the scalability of Ethereum’s layer-2 roll-up technology ahead of the full implementation of the Sharding upgrade, which is another scalability improvement planned for Ethereum. The Sharding upgrade is expected to be implemented in the second half of the following year.
Scalability Stages
Buterin went on to say that once the “basic roll-up scaling” milestone was met, rollups would be able to “partially take off training wheels, at least to stage 1.” This is a reference to a November 22nd post on the “Ethereum Magicians forum” that describes three stages of a “trust model” based on the maturity of a project’s technology. Layer-2 technologies, such as rollups, aim to improve the scalability of blockchain networks by offloading some transaction processing and storage from the main chain and onto a separate layer. This can help to increase the network’s overall capacity and lower transaction costs.The achievement of this milestone would indicate that rollups have progressed to the first stage of the trust model, indicating a level of technical maturity.
Stage 0
According to the “Ethereum Magicians forum” post, Stage 0 of the trust model is comparable to having “full training wheels” in place. This stage requires that all transactions be processed on-chain and allows users to withdraw their assets without the operator’s intervention. It is characterized by a high level of security and a lower level of scalability.
Stage 1
Stage 1 of the trust model, also known as “limited training wheels,” entails determining which transactions are accepted by the smart contract by using a transaction verification method, such as a fraud-proof or validity-proof scheme. An overarching security council is also required at this stage to oversee the process. Stage 1 is distinguished by greater scalability than Stage 0, but with a slightly lower level of security.
Stage 2
Stage 2 of the trust model, also known as “no training wheels,” requires two separate fraud provers, two separate validity provers, or one of each. This stage allows upgrades to be implemented, but with a 30-day delay. Stage 2 has the most scalability but the least security compared to the other stages.
Buterin made some comments on what he believes a “Good Crypto Future” might look like in a separate Twitter post one day earlier on December 30. Buterin outlined several areas of crypto that would need to be fixed, including scaling, privacy, user experience, and making user accounts more secure for average users than centralized services.
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