Ethereum developers have accomplished significant feats in the past few weeks, including the Shapella upgrade, EIP-1559 Merge, and more. However, the network’s scalability problem is yet to be resolved.
What’s Next On Ethereum Roadmap
According to the Bankless analysis report, Ethereum is now focusing on the EIP-4844 Cancun hardfork, distributed validator technology (DVT), and proposer-builder separation to tackle the scalability problem.
The EIP-4844 Cancun hardfork aims to enhance the network’s scalability, which is a pressing usability issue. Rollup chains, such as Arbitrum and Optimism, are an interim solution for scalability but are still costly and slow.
The EIP-4844 proposal seeks to divide the blockchain network into different databases and a technique known as sharding to provide space for millions of additional transactions on Ethereum.
The network can store 50-100 kilobytes of data in a block, but EIP-4844 will increase it to 1-2 megabytes, thereby reducing the cost of using rollups by 20x.
It will pave the way for on-chain use cases that require high transaction loads. The implementation of EIP-4844 is expected to happen sometime between Q3-Q4 of 2023.
Another innovation to look out for is distributed validator technology (DVT), which is expected to make node validation easier without sacrificing decentralization.
DVT aims to enable a form of “squad staking,” where a group of individuals can collectively stake different amounts of ETH and run a node using multi-party computation (MPC).
This innovation will decentralize the cost of solo staking, reducing the financial barrier for individuals or small DAOs to participate in validating the Ethereum network. This move will help reduce market concentration, which Lido and centralized exchanges currently dominate.
Furthermore, the proposer-builder separation, an additional feature on the Ethereum roadmap, aims to tackle the centralization of power on Ethereum.
This proposal will reduce the control of Ethereum’s development by a few individuals or entities by separating the process of proposing and building changes to the network.
Nevertheless, Developers of the Ethereum network are working on solving scalability issues with EIP-4844, DVT, and proposer-builder separation. These will boost capacity, decentralize staking, and decrease the centralization of power in development.
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