Ethereum Technology Development Trends and Opportunity Analysis

Looking back at the history of the Ethereum development community, we find that many cutting-edge technology discussions have ultimately evolved into everyday application products, such as DEX, lending, rollup, and DA, etc. This evolutionary process also contains investment opportunities. This article will explore the current trends in Ethereum technology development and potential opportunities from the perspectives of the Ethereum roadmap, the recent DevCon conference, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade.

Ethereum Roadmap Analysis

The development roadmap of Ethereum has always been an important reference for observing its future direction, including stages such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. Each of these stages has its own focus:

• The Merge: Completed the transition from PoW to PoS and improved the consensus protocol.
• The Surge: Focused on improving scalability and providing better foundational support for rollups.
• The Scourge: Dedicated to addressing MEV-related issues, such as builder centralization and the excessive capture of MEV value by LST.
• The Verge: Plans to change the underlying data structure from Merkle trees to Verkle trees and advance the Snarkification of the EVM.
• The Purge: Reduce node storage and state maintenance pressure through data reduction and archiving.
• The Splurge: Involves improvements to the EVM layer, account abstraction, and cutting-edge cryptographic applications, etc.

The specific improvement content, expected effects, and current progress of each stage are as follows:

1. The Merge

   • Single-slot finality: Enhancing network security
   • Lower the validator threshold: increase the decentralization of the network
   • Progress: Partially completed, ongoing optimization

2. The Surge

   • EIP-4844: Launched, improves data availability
   • PeerDAS: In development, aimed at reducing node pressure.
   • Cross-rollup interaction: research phase, enhancing interoperability of the L2 ecosystem

3. The Scourge

   • MEV-related improvements: Discussion stage, the goal is to optimize the value distribution mechanism

4. The Verge

   • Verkle tree conversion: In planning, it will enhance data efficiency
   • EVM Snarkification: Research phase, expected to significantly improve performance

5. The Purge

   • Historical data processing: In planning, it will reduce the burden on nodes.
   • Technical debt cleanup: Ongoing, optimizing system architecture

6. The Splurge

   • EVM underlying improvements: Ongoing research to enhance virtual machine efficiency
   • Account Abstraction: Partial implementation, improving user experience
   • Cutting-edge cryptography applications: exploration stage, such as VDF and other technologies

Highlights of the DevCon Conference

The recently held Ethereum DevCon conference discussed several hot topics:

1. Beam Chain Concept: It proposes a long-term vision similar to "Ethereum 3.0", including underlying Snarkification and improvements in block generation and staking mechanisms. This concept is expected to take about 5 years to realize.

2. Topics Related to Rollup:

   • The issues of cross-rollup liquidity and interactivity remain the focus.
   • The maturity differences of L2 technology are significant, with most projects still in the early stages.

3. Other discussion topics:

   • Chain Abstraction
   • Pre-confirmation mechanism
   • Application of Cryptographic Technology
   • Future Upgrade Plan

Pectra Upgrade Highlights

The Pectra upgrade expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025 will bring several significant changes:

1. EIP-7702 (Account Abstraction):

   • Allow EOA accounts to temporarily convert to smart contract accounts
   • Improve user experience, such as signing multiple transactions at once, zero gas fee transactions
   • May increase security risks such as signature phishing.
   • Require wallets and other products to be appropriately modified

2. EIP-7691 (Increase blob count):

   • The target number of blobs per block increases from 3 to 6, and the maximum value increases from 6 to 9.
   • Further reduce rollup costs and enhance Ethereum data availability advantages.
   • Optimize the dynamic adjustment mechanism for gas fees

3. EIP-7251 (Increase Staking Limit):

   • Increase the maximum limit of a single staking node from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether
   • Simplify the operations of large staking service providers and large holders, reducing the number of validators.

Future Opportunity Analysis

Based on the above technological development trends, we can foresee potential opportunities in the following aspects:

1. Interoperability solutions between Rollups:
   • Based rollup: Achieves transaction sequencing through L1, ensuring the atomicity of cross-L2 interactions.
   • Shared sequencer: Multiple L2s share a sequencer group to improve collaborative efficiency.
   • Cross-chain intents: Using intent protocols to meet cross-rollup requirements

Related projects such as Spire Labs' Based Stack, Astria, Espresso, Polygon AggLayer, etc. are actively advancing. At the same time, standards like ERC-7683 and ERC-7802 are also exploring solutions to cross-chain liquidity issues.

2. Account Abstraction (AA) Development:

   • The implementation of EIP-7702 will bring new opportunities for the AA project.
   • Combining chain abstraction and intents may lead to more complex cross-chain interaction functionalities.
   • After the Pectra upgrade, early participants of EIP-7702, such as Zerodev, may gain a growth advantage.

3. Cryptographic Applications Expansion:

   • The zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are becoming increasingly mature.
   • The combined application of ZKP with technologies such as MPC and FHE
   • Cutting-edge cryptographic concepts (such as indistinguishability obfuscation) are receiving attention
   • Consumer-grade applications such as ZK Email, zkTLS, and other verification-related applications may see wider adoption.
   • Compliance concerns regarding privacy-related applications may be alleviated.

These technological developments and upgrades will bring new opportunities and challenges to the Ethereum ecosystem, and participants need to closely monitor and actively respond to these changes.