Vitalik Buterin has a clear strategy for the growth of Ethereum, dividing fast improvements and large-scale changes over a long period of time.
In a post on February 27, he wrote that Ethereum needs to enhance three key areas in the next five years: execution, data, and state. The plan is ambitious: the network needs to scale by almost 1000x without compromising decentralization.
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Glamsterdam Fork Targets Immediate Gains
The Glamsterdam fork brings some technical enhancements for enhanced block processing and resource management. It brings block access lists, where certain areas of a block can be verified simultaneously rather than sequentially.
It also brings enhanced proposer-builder separation (ePBS), which enables validators to use more of a slot for verifying blocks. This increases the number of transactions that can fit in a slot without increasing security risks. Gas pricing is an important aspect of the plan.
Currently, some storage costs 5,000 or 20,000 gas depending on the changes to the state. In the new model, “state creation gas” will be distinguished from execution gas.
For instance, an update to storage that changes from zero to a non-zero value may cost up to 60,000 gas, but this will be mostly classified under the state category.
This is important in ensuring that the size of Ethereum’s state does not grow out of control while still allowing for an increase in execution power. The plan also brings in multidimensional gas, where different resources on the network will have their own limits.
Ethereum Targets 8MB Data Rate With PeerDAS Upgrade
Ethereum plans to increase the data capacity over time using PeerDAS, aiming for an 8 MB per second data rate. Currently, blobs are only compatible with layer 2 networks. In the future, the main Ethereum block data may be stored in blobs.
This will enable validators to verify the availability of data without having to download and replay the entire chain. Using cryptographic proofs reduces hardware requirements and makes it accessible to more people.
In the short run, it may increase data capacity by 10 to 20x. In the long run, breaking down blocks into blobs may enhance limits by 500x.
Source: X
ZK-EVM Rollout in Phases
Scaling execution is heavily dependent on zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines. In 2026, execution clients supporting verification for ZK-EVMs might allow 5% of the network to be secured by these proofs.
By 2027, Ethereum could encourage the use of these proofs, potentially up to 20% of validators.
If the security objectives are met, the network will later transition to a 3-of-5 multi-proof system. For a block to be valid, it would require three different proof systems.
At this point, most nodes would be able to trust mostly cryptographic proofs rather than having to revalidate each transaction. Buterin also spoke about the issue of state growth, which is currently growing by around 100 GB per year.
Scaling this 20x would increase this to 2 TB per year. Rather than requiring all nodes to store massive databases, the proposal appears to consider layered storage and temporary state models.
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