What Ethereum is today is far from what it used to be, thanks to the hard work of the visionary team of developers behind the blockchain network and its entire ecosystem. No Ethereum faithful can forget The Merge, which was one of the massive turning points in the network’s lifespan. But while the merge was amazing, Vitalik Buterin has said another phase is coming in Ethereum’s future, and it rhymes with “The Merge”.
“The Surge” is the name Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has given to the next and newest phase of Ethereum’s evolution. On Wednesday, October 16th, the Ethereum boss shared a blog post about how the blockchain’s capacity could be scaled up to handle more than a hundred thousand transactions every second.
Possible futures for the Ethereum protocol, part 2: The Surgehttps://t.co/DdEUpV4zQN
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 17, 2024
Buterin wants to achieve this by using Layer-2 scaling solutions while guaranteeing Ethereum’s decentralization and security. He then called for sustained progress by balancing Ethereum’s core principles with scalability.
Further, he highlighted that the Ethereum team now had the task of finishing up the rollup-centric roadmap while also solving the problems he mentioned, and preserving what makes Ethereum special, which are its “robustness and decentralization.”
Source: X
The Ethereum boss also explained that The Surge would be highly focused on converging sharding and layer-2 protocols, which are Ethereum’s tried and trusted scaling strategies.
As he explained, Sharding will allow nodes to handle only fractions of the total transactions. At the same time, the L-2 solutions, like rollups, will help ensure data is efficiently managed by taking most of the computation off the main blockchain.
According to the blog post, Ethereum’s rollup-centric approach will also be heavily featured in The Surge because it focuses on processes that move most transaction processing to layer-2 networks and help keep Ethereum’s main blockchain secure.
By focusing on these, the core Ethereum chain can act as a secure base layer, while the rollups handle scaling by taking many transactions off-chain. This will not only help improve transaction speeds but also lower fees while maintaining the Ethereum Network's integrity.
Buterin also acknowledged that there might be some challenges in achieving The Surge. One challenge he noted was balancing the good ol’ blockchain trilemma of scalability, decentralization, and security. But Buterin did not stop there. He proposed that a cryptographic solution called SNARK could be used to ensure transaction integrity on Ethereum without overwhelming the network’s nodes.
One major talking point Buterin also emphasized was the interoperability that needs to exist between all layer-2 networks on the blockchain. In his words, “Ethereum should feel like one ecosystem, not 34 blockchains”.
As of now, no date has been released for when The Surge will be integrated, but users are excited about all the features it will include, as well as Ethereum’s next big upgrade, Pectra, which will be released sometime in early 2025.
Dayo Paul
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