The soft date for Ethereriums Merge is fast approaching. And this has left many wondering what then, is this Ethereums fina form? Vitalik Buterin has updated the Ethereum roadmap to answer this, let us take a look at what is in store.
The Merge and what it is
The Merge has been hailed as everything from the second coming of Crypto Jesus to whatever is the opposite of that. And this has led to some confusion as to what exactly will happen, and what changes The Merge will bring. Many think it will reduce gas prices on the Ethereum Blockchain and will increase the number of transactions.
Those are probably the two most common misconceptions about The Merge. The truth is that none of those things will happen with The Merge. The only thing that will change is the consensus mechanism. There Ethereum moves from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.
The new roadmap
The new roadmap that Vitalik Buterin has published does however address some of these "misconceptions". As they are things that are planned to happen, but not yet. The new roadmap adds four new goals, The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.
Vitalik has also clarified that these are not stages, as in first will The Surge happen, then next is The Verge, and so on. Instead, these four are worked on in parallel. That however does not mean they will all be achieved at the same time. But which one will be finished first, and implemented. That is I assume something, not even Vitalik knows at this time.
Let us look at these four new goals and try and figure out what they mean for Ethereum. Below is a picture detailing them and the blocks that make up them.
This picture was taken from: https://twitter.com/milesdeutscher/status/1550315295402668032
The Surge - The goal with this is the introduction of sharding, or side-chains, to the Ethereum Blockchain. The goal is for this to be done in 2023. And after all the steps are completed Ethereum "will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second" said Vitalik. This will greatly reduce the gas fees for the Ethereum Blockchain. And is one of the things that often gets lumped into and attributed to The Merge.
The Verge - Will introduce Verkel Trees. This is an upgrade to Merkle proofs, as it drastically reduces the proof size. This will also help with scaling the network. But it will also reduce the amount of storage nodes will have to have. As more and more blocks get added the Blockchain grows and grows in size. But this change will allow for more transactions to be stored in the same amount of space.
The Purge - This is actually what it sounds like. This will purge some historical data in order to streamline storage and minimize network congestion.
The Splurge - This is a number of smaller updates that will help with fine-tuning the network and allow for smoother operations.
After these stages are complete, Ethereum will be 55% complete according to Vitalik. Meaning that there is still plenty of things to come still. And Vitalik also famously said:
The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoiners consider Bitcoin to be 80% complete, but Ethereans consider Ethereum to be 40% complete. -Vitalik Buterin
But I guess he soon will have to change that. =)
Have these new stages and updates to the Ethereum roadmap gotten you excited for the future? Or are you more of a "let's see if they can make The Merge happen first, then I will think about it" type of person? Please share your thoughts on this in the comment section down below.
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Picture provided by: https://unsplash.com/
