Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published a new post on the
The post reflects Buterin’s renewed focus on scaling Ethereum’s base layer, after several years in which much of the ecosystem’s scaling strategy focused on layer 2 rollups. The plan comes on the heels of the Ethereum Foundation publishing a ‘straw map’ aimed at making the network more efficient in the long term.
In the short term, Buterin says Ethereum can safely increase performance by making blocks easier and faster to verify. Upcoming updates will allow computers running Ethereum to review different parts of a block simultaneously, rather than processing everything step by step. At the same time, changes to the way blocks are constructed will allow the network to use more of each 12-second processing window, rather than ending early as a precaution (known as ePBS and will be implemented in the next Glamsterdam update).
The result: Ethereum should be able to fit more transactions into each block without increasing the risk of errors or instability.
Another important part of the plan involves rethinking how transaction fees, known as “gas,” are calculated. Buterin maintains that not all activity on Ethereum puts equal pressure on the network. There is a big difference between using computing power temporarily and permanently adding new data that each Ethereum computer or node must store forever.
Right now, those costs are largely pooled together. But creating new permanent data (such as deploying a new contract) increases the size of the blockchain in the long run, making it more expensive to run a node over time. This, in turn, risks driving out smaller operators. Buterin’s proposal would make long-term storage more expensive while allowing more space for daily transaction processing. In fact, Ethereum could handle more activity without dramatically increasing the speed of the blockchain’s growth.
The goal, he argues, is to avoid a future in which Ethereum processes more transactions but consumes so much data that only large, well-funded players can afford to participate.
In the longer term, Buterin sees Ethereum relying more on zero-knowledge proofs (a private verification method) and expanded data capacity through so-called blobs. Originally introduced to help Layer 2 networks publish transaction data more cheaply, blobs could eventually carry Ethereum’s own transaction data, a change that would allow validators to confirm activity without re-executing each transaction themselves.
Read More: Ethereum ‘Glamsterdam’ Upgrade Aims to Fix MEV Equity
