Co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin unveiled an updated roadmap that featured a new phase in the ETH’s roadmap called “The Scourge,” which is said to address the MEV problems.
The most recent addition to the ETH roadmap would offer more tangible milestones in addition to the previous five-phase approach to scalability. based on the co-founder.
In order to increase network performance and scalability, the new Ethereum roadmap now has six phases: The Merge, the Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.
Except for the latest addition, other Ethereum upgrades are taking place concurrently after the switch from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to a Proof-of-Stake [PoS] network in September.
With Layer-2 techniques like sharding and rollups, which group transactions conducted off-chain to increase speed and reduce fees, the Surge focuses on scaling Ethereum.
Block verification on the Ethereum mainnet and other scaling solutions will be simplified, thanks to The Verge.
The Purge is not nearly as terrifying as the horror film of the same name. Its main aim is to ease network congestion, delete old data and make space.
And to make sure all previous upgrades function properly, the Splurge will include miscellaneous yet necessary additions. However, Scourge’s debut, which aims to solve MEV issues, is what draws the most interest.
Issues Surrounding Ethereum’s MEV
MEV stands for Miner Extractable Value, often known as Maximum Extractable Value in recent years.
It is a measurement of the profit a miner [or validator, sequencer, etc.] can gain by arbitrarily including, excluding, or reordering transactions within the blocks they generate on a blockchain network that supports smart contracts.
After the research team of a Web3 investment firm, Paradigm dug into them, the idea of Miner Extractable Value and the issues around it became well-known. In 2020, Dan Robinson, the head of Paradigm, wrote an article titled “Ethereum is a Dark Forest.”
Robinson claimed that front-running bots and other MEV problems might encourage miners to rearrange and submit transactions in their mempools for their own gain.
Given that users have had more than $663 million worth of value taken from them since 2020, MEV is currently recognized as one of Ethereum‘s top problems that affect its users on a large scale and is not just a minor issue.