The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin has added a new stage to the Ethereum technical roadmap, one that aims to improve censorship resistance and decentralization of the Ethereum network.
The new Ethereum network plans were revealed by Buterin in a Twitter post on November 5, in which he introduced the Scourge in an expanded six-part technical roadmap.
Following Ethereum’s switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network on September 15, Ethereum has been in the second stage -the Surge- with the goal of reaching 100,000 transactions per second through rollups.
The updated technical roadmap now inserts the Scourge as the new third stage, to be followed by the previously known stages: the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge.
Updated roadmap diagram! pic.twitter.com/MT9BKgYcJH
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 4, 2022
Updated roadmap diagram.
According to the Ethereum roadmap, the goal of the Scourge is “to ensure the inclusion of reliable and credibly neutral transactions and to avoid centralization and other risks of the MEV protocol.”
Ethereum co-founder’s call for a more “credibly neutral” consensus layer comes as miners are known
they exploit transactions on the Ethereum network in their favor.
Buterin has previously described a credibly neutral mechanism as one that “does not discriminate for or against any specific person.”
Miner Extractable Value (MEV) occurs when a miner gets ahead of other network participants by deciding which transactions are put into a block and in what order.
This allows miners to duplicate all winning trades in the mempool and execute their trades ahead of arbitrage seekers or anyone trying to make a profit.
As a result, Ethereum has been associated with a higher degree of centralization and censorship following the merger.
Following the network’s transition to PoS, the percentage of blocks compliant with the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reached 73% on November 3, a figure that many consider too high.
Ethereum bull and founder of The Daily Gwei, Anthony Sassano said in a Twitter post on October 15 that censorship resistance is “more important than scaling” at the current time.
Ethereum protocol upgrades in order of importance over the next 6-12 months:
– Beacon Chain withdrawals
– PBS/crLists/related censorship-resistance upgrades
– Proto-danksharding (EIP-4844)Just my humble opinion – censorship resistance is more important than scaling right now
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) October 15, 2022
Ethereum protocol updates in order of importance in the next 6-12 months:
– Beacon Chain Recalls
– PBS/crLists/related censorship resistance updates
– Proto-danksharding (EIP-4844)
This is just my humble opinion: censorship resistance is more important than scaling right now.
Although not all the details of the Scourge have been revealed, Ethereum’s co-founder recently proposed a “partial block auction” solution in which a block builder only has the right to decide part of the block content.
Other proposals have also been put forward to combat censorship at the consensus layer, such as the Ethereum research and development company’s SOFT (Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression) solution.
Buterin has also confirmed an update to The Verge, which will now involve the integration of Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (SNARK) technology into Ethereum.
The addition of SNARKs will add much-needed privacy-preserving features to the Ethereum network, while allowing the traceability of anonymous transactions.
Buterin also pointed out that A “more explicit role for quantum proof” will be implemented at various stages of the Ethereum roadmap as a necessary component of the “final” protocol.
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