Preface
Why is it worth paying attention to in the near future?
After the adoption of the Bitcoin spot ETF, the next narrative immediately shifted to the narrative logic with Ethereum as the core: May Ethereum spot ETF + Cancun upgrade + Restaking, etc.
A first look at the development rules of Ethereum
Merge The previous Ethereum was more like the development model of a startup company. PoW gave miners block rewards as an early marketing tool, and did not care about the value of the token. The token economy was rapidly inflating. In terms of priority, precipitated value > user experience .
The purpose of Merge is not to improve the performance of Ethereum, but to reduce the consumption of generating blockchain (PoW is converted into POS). Using the metaphor of Web2.0, it is more like the upstream part of an industrial chain to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and provide a better future for the future. To pave the way for sustainable development, the token economy has also become deflationary. At the same time, it focuses on user experience, gradually transforming miners income into pledge income, and gas fee income has also been reduced.
The Cancun upgrade corresponds to the part of The Surge, which starts with user experience being the first priority (such as increasing transaction speed and reducing gas fees).
The upgrade cycle interval in the future will be relatively short. In a sense, Ethereum will change the consensus of PoW to PoS after the Shanghai upgrade. It has entered a mature period. Although there will be several major upgrades in the future, it can be seen that the core purpose is to focus on on-chain scalability, simpler verification blocks, cheaper, more powerful and stable performance.
some thoughts
The development of Ethereum is complex and diverse. In the process of learning the overall development path, there are many unresolved issues to be considered.
Vitalik has a very strong guiding role in the development of Ethereum. In fact, from a companys perspective, a good CEO leading the company to charge forward is a very good way to develop. In the end, all the development of the Ethereum ecosystem driven by Buterin will be Long ETH.
Layer 2 such as Arb, OP, ZKsync, Metis, etc.; Defi such as Aave, Compound, Uniswap, and many other sky-high valuation projects are attached to Ethereum and can become a popular narrative for a period of time. Ethereum can more or less Get bonuses.
Rather than being similar to Microsoft and Apple, the one that feels closest is NVIDIA. AI development, VRAR, Web3.0, various clouds, computing power centers, any cutting-edge technology cannot bypass computing power, and it cannot do without NVIDIA.
Web 3.0 is also in a similar state. It is difficult for any development to develop without Ethereum. The Ethereum narrative has been quiet for a while, but it has gone round and round because of the Cancun upgrade and the Ethereum spot ETF, Layer 2, and Eth have risen together, including more Early Defi Summer, NFT Summer, etc. will drive up the price of Ethereum, and projects with a longer half-life need to have sufficient contact with Ethereum.
Many people who want to break away from Ethereum basically think with the logic of Ethereum killer. The TON discussed before, if they dont support Ethereum, they will lose their voice.
The development of Ethereum is very centralized, and the Ethereum chain itself is very decentralized; sometimes it feels that the degree of centralization in the development of Ethereum is comparable to that of the Uniswap team, without some protocols such as Aave and MakerDAO The degree of decentralization is well done. It also reflects that if a project wants to develop well, it may still have to be centralized in nature.
Perhaps one day Ethereum will be able to develop to an extremely mature stage and then be completely decentralized, but at least as long as Vitalik is still young, I think that day is still far away. Having said that, Ethereum is only a company that has only been in business for 11 years and is far from mature.
1. Big Background—A brief review of the history of Ethereum
1.1 History and Forks
The following content frame is quoted from:https://ethereum.org/zh/history, and other public information. For more specific content, please click on the link for reference.
2013 - The birth of Phase 0 Ethereum
White paper released, Ethereum was born
On November 27, 2013, Vitalik Buterin released the Ethereum White Paper
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, released the first version of the white paper of Ethereum, introducing the token system of the Ethereum platform;
Summary
The white paper defines smart contracts. The concept of Ethereum is mentioned for the first time. The white paper explains that Ethereum can be used as gas on the Ethereum network. When users conduct transfer transactions, deploy smart contracts and other activities, they need to pay a certain gas fee, part of which is gas. It will be paid as a reward to the block validator (also known as the miner). If the initiator of the transaction pays insufficient ether coins, the transaction will not be executed. If the ether coins paid are excessive, the remaining part will be returned to The originators wallet.
2014 – Phase 0.5 Ethereum Sale
Ethereum sales
July 22, 2014 00:00:00 +UTC
The pre-sale period for Ethereum is 42 days and can be purchased using Bitcoin.
Summary
The initial exchange rate was 1 Bitcoin for 2,000 Ethereum coins. This exchange rate remained for 14 days, and then the exchange rate began to decline linearly until it dropped to 1,337 Ethereum coins for 1 Bitcoin. The token sale was held on September 2, 2014. By the end of the day, a total of approximately 18 million US dollars in sales had been obtained, and Yi Gong had sold more than 60 million ether coins. After completing the purchase, the received Ether coins cannot be transferred until the launch of the Ethereum genesis block.
In addition to the more than 60 million ETH in the presale, there are two other allocations. One amount is allocated to contributors who participated in the early development of Ethereum, and the other is allocated to long-term research projects. The amount of these two ETH amounts is 9.9% of the pre-sale amount of ETH.
That is to say, when Ethereum was officially released, a total of 72002454.768 ETH had been distributed.
Image Source:https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sale
2015 - Phase 1: Frontier
On March 3, 2015, in Ethereum’sOfficial blogFour important stages were announced in the article. According to the blog, some of Vitalik’s original thinking logic was as follows:
Frontier: Frontier’s main purpose during the launch process is to get mining operations and Ethereum exchanges running so that the community can launch their mining rigs and start building a “live” environment where people can test DApps and earn Ether to upload their own software to Ethereum. Make Ethereum fully stable among core developers and auditors;
Homestead: Frontier is like a closed beta version, and Homestead is a public beta version;
Metropolis (Metropolis): a complete and mature user interactive version, pursuing user experience;
Serenity: PoW to PoS
border
July 30, 2015 03:26:13 +UTC
Summary
Frontier is the original version of Ethereum, but there is very little that can be done on it. The release follows the successful completion of the Olympic testing phase. It is aimed at technical users, especially developers. Blocks have a fuel limit of 5,000 units. This thaw period allows miners to begin operations and early adopters enough time to install clients.
Similar to the cold start of many Web 3.0 projects, miners will receive a reward of 5 Ether coins for every block they mine on the Border mainnet.
Border thaw bifurcation
September 7, 2015 09:33:09 +UTC
Block number: 200, 000
Ethereum Price: $1.24
Summary
The Border Thaw fork increased the limit of 5,000 units of gas per block and set the default gas price to 51 gwei. This will enable the transaction - which requires 21,000 units of gas.
To ensure future hard forks to proof-of-stake, introducedifficulty bombthe concept of.
Difficulty bomb, also known as TTD, stands for Total Terminal Difficulty, which is the sum of the difficulty of all previous blocks. When the accumulated mining difficulty value of the entire network reaches TTD, the ETH main network will activate the difficulty bomb. The difficulty bomb is a backdoor function that adjusts the difficulty of Ethereum. Ethereums PoW block time is not fixed, but the mining difficulty is dynamically adjusted according to the computing power of the entire network. In this way, the block time is fixed within a rough range. The deployment of the difficulty bomb uses a backdoor function to adjust the mining difficulty to a maximum value, so that no miner can produce blocks at this mining difficulty, thereby pushing miners to give up PoW. The PoW-POS conversion does not set a fixed block height, but stipulates TTD as the moment when Merge occurs. Part of the reason is to prevent someone from deliberately sabotaging the Merge process.
This disguised form proves that Ethereum has long been determined to move from PoW to PoS.
2016 - Phase 2: Homestead
Ethereum’s first hard fork, after experiencing multiple security incidents, gradually improved some specifications of smart contracts.
home bifurcation
March 14, 2016 06:49:53 +UTC
Block number: 1, 150, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 12.50
Summary
Home Fork optimizes the creation process of smart contracts.
DAO fork
July 20, 2016 01:20:40 +UTC
Block number: 1, 920, 000
Ethereum Price: US$ 12.54
Summary
This fork was an unplanned passive fork, stemming from an attack on Ethereum.
The DAO is a crowdfunding project launched by the blockchain company Slock.it to provide a way for community funding for projects. Community users participate in voting by exchanging their ETH for DAO Token. If the crowdfunding is successful, they can receive a portion of the profit reward. The project completed a 28-day crowdfunding in April 2016, raising a total of more than 12 million ETH, accounting for almost 14% of the number of Ethereum at that time. However, just 2 months later, hackers exploited vulnerabilities in The DAO code to steal 3.6 million ETH from the fund pool.
This action was voted on by the Ethereum community. All Ethereum holders will be able to vote via transactions on the voting platform. The decision to fork received over 85% of the vote. Through the fork rollback, the ETH stolen by the hacker was recovered.
This fork moves funds from the problematic contract to a new contract that has only one function: withdrawals. Anyone who has lost funds can withdraw ether from their wallet at a rate of 1 ether for every 100 DAO tokens.
Some miners refused to fork because the DAO incident was not a flaw in the protocol. They later formed Ethereum Classic (ETC).
orange whistle fork
October 18, 2016 01:19:31 +UTC
Block number: 2, 463, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 12.50
Summary
The Orange Whistle fork is an optimization of the Denial of Service (DoS) attack suffered by the Ethereum network on September 18, 2016, which caused severe delays in transaction processing; it mainly solves emergency network health issues related to undervalued operating codes.
Spurious Dragon Fork—Spurious Dragon
November 22, 2016 04:15:44 +UTC
Block number: 2, 675, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 9.84
Summary
Pseudo Dragon Fork is further optimized for Denial of Service (DoS) network attacks, including:
-Adjust opcode prices to prevent future attacks on the network.
- Enable blockchain weight loss for blockchain status.
-Added replay attack protection.
2017 - Phase Three: Metropolis
The main work of Metropolis is to repair some problems existing in the Ethereum network and prepare for the introduction of ZK-SNARKS.
The most influential event that occurred during this stage was the two halvings of block rewards: from 5 ETH to 3 ETH and then to 2 ETH, which is regarded as a transition period from PoW to PoS.
At this stage, we begin to consider user experience and how to smoothly transition from PoW to PoS in the future.
Byzantium upgrade
October 16, 2017 05:22:11 +UTC
Block number: 4, 370, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 334.23
Summary
The Byzantine fork paved the way for the introduction of ZK-Snark and began to focus on user privacy and user experience.
- move the blockMiningReward reduced from 5 Ethereum to 3 Ethereum.
-Willdifficulty bombPostponed for a year.
-Added the ability to call other contracts without changing state.
-Added certain encryption methods to achieveLayer 2 。
2019 - Phase Four: Serenity
Ethereum is gradually maturing, and the consensus has shifted from PoW to PoS. User experience, security, zone decentralization, and scalability are the most important development directions of Ethereum.
Constantinople fork
February 28, 2019 07:52:04 +UTC
Block number: 7, 280, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 136.29
Summary
blockMiningReward reduced from 3 Ethereum to 2 Ethereum.
December 8, 2019 12:25:09 +UTC
Block number: 9, 069, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 151.06
Summary
- Optimized gas costs for specific operations in the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
-Improve resilience after denial of service attacks.
- Enables Layer 2 solutions based on Zero-Knowledge Concise Non-Interactive Knowledge Argument and Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Knowledge Argument to have better performance.
-Enable contracts to introduce more creative features.
2020 Muir Glacier Upgrade
January 2, 2020 08:30:49 +UTC
Block number: 9, 200, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 127.18
Summary
The Muir Glacier Fork delays the difficulty bomb. Increasing the block difficulty of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism may increase the wait time for sending transactions and using decentralized applications, thereby reducing the usability of Ethereum.
Deploy pledge deposit contract
October 14, 2020 09:22:52 +UTC
Block number: 11, 052, 984
Ethereum price: US$ 379.04
Summary
The Staking Deposit Contract introduces staking into the Ethereum ecosystem. Although it is a mainnet contract, it directly affects the release timeline of the beacon chain, which is an important part of the Ethereum upgrade.
Beacon chain genesis block
December 1, 2020 12:00:35 +UTC
Beacon chain block number: 1
Ethereum Price: US$ 586.23
Summary
The beacon chain requires 16,384 accounts that store 32 staked ether coins to ensure a safe launch. This happened on November 27, 2020, meaning the Beacon Chain started producing blocks on December 1, 2020.
The beacon chain plays the role of managing, supervising and verifying the blockchain network. The beacon chain uses a random method to select verifiers. Those who succeed in verification will be rewarded, but if there is malicious behavior, they will be punished.
After merging, the time units of a block will appear as slots and epochs. A slot is created every 12 seconds, and each epoch pack consists of 32 slots. An epoch is a fixed period of time at the end of which verifiers will be reassigned.
To become a validator and gain voting rights, users must invest at least 32 ETH.
Ethereums rule is that for each epoch, validators will be randomly assigned to 32 committees, ensuring that each committee consists of at least 128 validators. The system uses the random algorithm RANDAO to allocate 1 validator for each period and randomly selects a committee for this period. This validator is responsible for proposing blocks, while the committee is responsible for validating and voting on proposals. Once the vote is passed, a block will be generated and the proposer will receive the reward; otherwise, not only will the reward not be obtained, but the deposit will also be forfeited. The same goes for ordinary verifiers: if they follow the rules correctly, they are rewarded, while spoilers are punished. Once the 32 ETH deposit drops below 16 ETH, the validators qualifications will be terminated.
2021
Berlin upgrade
April 15, 2021 10:07:03 +UTC
Block number: 12, 244, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 2, 454.00
Summary
The Berlin upgrade optimizes gas costs for certain Ethereum Virtual Machine operations and adds support for multiple transaction types.
London upgrade
August 5, 2021 12:33:42 +UTC
Block number: 12, 965, 000
Ethereum Price: US$ 2, 621.00
Summary
The London upgrade introduced EIP-1559, which reformed the transaction fee market. Continuing to delay the difficulty bomb until launch on 12/1/21.
Aquila upgrade
October 27, 2021 10:56:23 +UTC
Period number: 74, 240
Ethereum price: US$ 4, 024.00
Summary
The Aquila upgrade is the first planned Beacon Chain upgrade. It adds support for “synchronization committees”—support for light clients, and adds penalties for validator laziness and slashable behavior as it progresses toward merges.
Arrow Glacier Upgrade
December 9, 2021 07:55:23 +UTC
Block number: 13, 773, 000
Ethereum price: US$ 4, 111.00
Summary
The difficulty bomb delays a total of 10,700,000 blocks until June 2022.
2022 Gray Glacier Upgrade
June 30, 2022 10:54:04 +UTC
Block number: 15, 050, 000
Ethereum Price: US$ 1, 069.00
Summary
Gray Glacier network upgrade delays difficulty bomb by three months. This is the only change introduced in this upgrade, which is essentially similar to the Arrow Glacier and Muir Glacier upgrades. Similar changes were made to the Byzantine, Constantinople, and London network upgrades.
Bellatrix upgrade
September 6, 2022 11:34:47 +UTC
Period number: 144, 896
Ethereum Price: US$ 1, 558.00
Summary
The Bellatrix upgrade is the second planned Beacon chain upgrade, preparing the Beacon chain for the merger. It increases the penalty a validator receives for laziness and for engaging in slashable behavior to its full value. The Bellatrix upgrade also includes updates to the fork selection rules to prepare the Beacon Chain for merging and transitioning from the last Proof-of-Work block to the first Proof-of-Stake block. This includes making consensus clients aware of the total terminal difficulty of 58750000000000000000000.
Paris Upgrade (Merge)
September 15, 2022 06:42:42 +UTC
Block number: 15, 537, 394
Ethereum Price: US$ 1, 472.00
Summary
The Paris upgrade was triggered when the proof-of-work blockchain exceeded the total terminal difficulty of 58750000000000000000000. This happened on block 15537393 on September 15, 2022, and triggered the Paris upgrade at the next block. The Paris upgrade is a merger transition. The main function of Ethereum ends the proof-of-work mining algorithm and related consensus logic and starts the proof-of-stake. The Paris upgrade itself is an upgrade to the execution client (equivalent to the Bellatrix upgrade on the consensus layer), allowing the execution client to accept instructions from the consensus client connected to it.
2023 Capella upgrade
April 12, 2023 22:27:35 +UTC
Period number: 194, 048
Beacon chain block number: 6, 209, 536
Ethereum Price: US$ 1, 917.00
Summary
The Capella upgrade is the third major upgrade of the consensus layer (Beacon Chain), which enables staking withdrawals. Capella and Shanghai simultaneously upgraded the execution layer and enabled the pledge withdrawal function.
This consensus layer upgrade allows pledgers who have not provided withdrawal certificates for their initial deposits to provide withdrawal certificates to achieve withdrawals.
The upgrade also provides automated account scanning to continuously process any available reward payments or full withdrawals from validator accounts.
Shanghai upgrade
April 12, 2023 22:27:35 +UTC
Block number: 17, 034, 870
Ethereum Price: US$ 1, 917.00
Summary
The Shanghai upgrade introduces pledge withdrawals to the execution layer. The Shanghai upgrade coincides with the Capella upgrade, enabling the block to accept withdrawal operations so stakers can withdraw ether from the beacon chain to the execution layer.
1.2 Why can Ethereum become a deflationary model?
PoW is more like an early marketing tool for a startup company, with subsidies for stable famous songs (miners’ stable income from mining), while PoS is more like equity and net issuance of ETH.
The Merge significantly changed Ethereum’s monetary policy. By eliminating miner rewards and converting them to staking rewards, it significantly reduces the issuance of new ETH tokens. This constitutes a decrease in daily ETH issuance of approximately 88.7%, equivalent to an annualized issuance rate of 0.52% of the total supply, and then Since the Gas fees under EIP-1559 are destroyed, the net issuance shows a deflationary trend.
There are two key changes:
1.2.1 EIP-1559 introduced in the London upgrade: citing the cost burning mechanism
Reference article:Fuel and fees
Calculation formula of the old protocol: Gas fee = Gas units (limit) * Gas price per unit
For the simplest on-chain transfer transaction, the Gas limit is fixed at 21,000, no matter how busy the chain is. **So, as long as the Gas price and Gas limit are clear, we can know how much eth we spent for this interaction. Among them, the gas price will change with the congestion of the network, and the gas limit will remain unchanged.
Suppose Alice needs to pay 1 Ether to Bob. In the transaction, the fuel limit is 21,000 units and the price of fuel is 200 gwei.
The total cost is: Gas units (limit) * Gas price per unit, that is, 21, 000 * 200 = 4, 200, 000 gwei or 0.0042 ether coins.
In order to give higher priority, scientists may set a very high gas fee on the fly, which makes the user experience confusing and difficult to predict.
The new protocol calculation formula is: Gas fee = (Base fee + Priority fee) × Gas limit, and the increase in Base fee in the next block is up to 12.5%.
The base fee is set by the protocol and will be destroyed directly, and the priority fee is the tip set by the user to be paid to the verifier.
For example, lets say Jordan wants to pay Taylor 1 Ether. An Ethereum transfer requires 21,000 units of gas, and the base fee is 10 gwei. Jordan paid 2 gwei as a tip.
The fee is 21,000 * (10 + 2) = 252,000 gwei (0.000252 ether).
When Jordan transfers money, 1.000252 Ethereum will be debited from Jordans account. Taylors account is increased by 1.0000 Ether. The validator receives a tip worth 0.000042 Ethereum. The base fee of 0.00021 Ethereum coins was destroyed.
1.2.2 Paris upgrade
First, the Constantinople hard fork reduced the mining reward from the original 3 ETH per block to 2 ETH. Then, The merge converted PoW into PoS, and the mining rewards (160,000 eth/day) disappeared directly and turned into staking rewards (1,600 eth/day), and the issuance volume dropped by 99%.
On September 15, 2022, after the Paris upgrade, Ethereum officially began deflation.
Data source: https://ultrasound.money/
Since the Merge, the total supply has exceeded 300,000 Ethereum coins, with 981k destroyed and 723k issued every year, deflating at a rate of 0.21% every year.
Data source: https://ultrasound.money/
After the Merge, Ethereum solved the problem of high energy consumption, and then focused on performance issues and cost issues. Layer 2 solved these two problems at the same time, so it became the most watched track in the Ethereum ecosystem after the Merge.
1.3 Ethereum’s future upgrade route
Vitalik Buterin presented a vision for the Ethereum roadmap, which divides upgrades into several categories based on their impact on the Ethereum architecture. This includes:
Merge: Upgrade involving the switch from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake (completed)
Surge: Over 100,000 TPS on Rollups
Scourge: Upgrades covering censorship resistance, decentralization, LSD, and MEV risks
Verge: Upgrades involving easier verification of blocks
Purge: involves reducing the computational cost of operating nodes and simplifying protocol upgrades
Splurge: other
These upgrades are done in parallel, which means whichever part is developed faster may be upgraded first.
Image source-V God Twitter:https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1741190491578810445
2. What is Cancun Upgrade? What important EIPs have been implemented?
After the merger of Ethereum, the most important thing is to improve performance TPS, reduce gas fees, and make Ethereum close to a perfect application.
What kind of TPS and Gas Fee does Vitalik think Ethereum can achieve to be considered a qualified public chain?
For example: TPS reaches 100,000+. The average TPS of VISA is 2,000, with a peak of 4,000+; the average TPS of Paypal is 200; Alipay can reach 250,000 during busy periods.
This Ethereum upgrade is called Dencun upgrade (Dencun+Cancun). The Cancun (Cancun, Devcon hosting city) upgrade focuses on the Ethereum execution layer (Execution Layer), and the Deneb upgrade focuses on the consensus layer (Consensus Layer).
The Cancun upgrade corresponds to the part of The Surge, with the goal of reaching 10+TPS.
According to Github, the Cancun upgrade will implement the following six EIPs, which we will focus on in the next section.
Image Source:https://github.com/ethereum/execution-specs/blob/master/network-upgrades/mainnet-upgrades/cancun.md
In addition to Pro-Danksharding (EIP-4844), the Cancun upgrade also includes EIP-6780, EIP-1153, EIP-6475, EIP-4788 and other improvement proposals.
2.1 Proto-Danksharding——EIP 4844
One of the most important things in the Cancun upgrade is the introduction of Proto-Danksharding to make the transition to Ethereums complete sharding expansion, and introduce similar technologies in advance. Ethereum’s ultimate goal is to split the mainnet into 64 slices to reach 100,000+ TPS.
The background of Proto-Danksharding is that although the Rollup solution significantly reduces transaction fees compared to the Ethereum main chain, it is not low enough yet. This is because the calldata that provides data availability on the Ethereum main chain still occupies a large cost (16 gas / byte). In the original idea, Ethereum proposed to provide 16 MB of dedicated data space for each block in data sharding for Rollup to use, but the actual implementation of data sharding is still far away.
Currently, the data returned by Layer 2 to Layer 1 is stored in Calldata, and the data is permanently stored in the execution layer. In addition, for security reasons, Calldata requires gas for each step of execution in order to prevent network resource abuse.
After Ethereum completed the merger, it separated the consensus layer (responsible for PoS consensus) and the execution layer (execution of contract code). The job of the execution layer is to execute the data stored in Calldata (which can be considered a transaction type).
The contents of Calldata can be divided into two parts:
Results of the
Transaction data - not much use. Once the verification is valid, it is of no use. It is enough to download the verification after a long enough time. It does not even need to be transmitted to the execution layer - EIP-4844 is to solve the problem of transaction data. This part It accounts for more than 60% of Calldatas entire cost.
Data Sources:https://dune.com/optimismfnd/optimism-l1-batch-submission-fees-security-costs
In fact, as transaction data, there are only verification requirements and no execution requirements. There is no need to transmit it to the execution layer to increase the burden on the execution layer. It can only be stored in the nodes of the consensus layer.
To this end, EIP-4844 introduces a new transaction type - Blob (Binary Large Objects, which is a further subdivision of transaction types), which carries one more data packet (about 125 kb) than a regular transaction, only in the consensus layer, similar to The cache package is similar to an additional plug-in database. It designs a separate data type Blob for the data returned by L2 and separates it from the Calldata of Layer 1. In this way, the Blob data only needs to be able to be accessed and verified by those who need it within a certain period of time. There is no need for the Layer 1 execution layer to execute all of it, thus greatly reducing the burden on Layer 1.
The size of each blob introduced by Proto-Danksharding is 128 KB. Each Ethereum block is planned to contain 3-6 blobs (0.375 MB - 0.75 MB), and will be gradually expanded to 64 in the future.
In comparison, the current data size that each Ethereum block can accommodate is less than 200 KB. After the introduction of blobs, the amount of data that Ethereum blocks can accommodate will be significantly increased.
Data Sources:https://etherscan.io/chart/blocksize
EIP-4844 is the advanced version of Danksharding, which aims to achieve temporary storage and retrieval of off-chain data through Ethereum nodes. Layer 2 itself compresses off-chain data. Therefore, it is expected to enable L2 to carry more data per blockchain. At the same time, transaction fees are reduced by 10-100 times.
If Dencun successfully achieves the average target of 3 blobs per block after the upgrade, L2 throughput will be increased by nearly 2 times. If the goal of adding 64 blobs to a block is finally achieved, the throughput of L2 will be increased by nearly 40 times.
Proto-Danksharding introduces EIP-1559, further reducing blob fees
Different types of gas should have different base fees and maximum limits
Blob data costs are cheaper - Blobs do not compete for block space, theoretical gasfee should be lower, naturally cheaper, further reducing costs
What if I want to see transaction data?
EIP-4844 also introduces the KZG (Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg) commitment scheme as part of the blob verification and attestation generation process. KZG commitment is a polynomial commitment scheme that enables submitters to use a short string to commit to polynomials, and supports verifiers to use short strings to confirm stated commitments. Simply put, KZG can simplify the verification of large amounts of data into the verification of small cryptographic commitments.
Comparison before and after introducing Proto-Danksharding.
2.2 Others
EIP-6780 proposes modifications to the SELFDESTRUCT opcode functionality in preparation for future applications of Merkle trees. Through the subsequent application of Merkle trees, the storage efficiency of Ethereum will be greatly improved.
EIP-1153 adds a transient storage opcode that allows the protocol to perform temporary storage, thereby saving network gas fees.
EIP-6475 is a companion to EIP-4844, providing better readability and compact serialization by introducing SSZ-encoded transaction types.
EIP-4788 aims to improve the structure of cross-chain bridges and staking pools.
3. Relevant data situation
3.1 Layer 2 data situation
Total TVL
Total TVL has exceeded $20b
Data source: https://l2 b eat.com/scaling/tvl
Layer 2 TVL situation
Although Vitalik believes that ZK is the final solution for Rollup, in fact Arb+OP and other Op systems have exceeded 85%. At the same time, many projects are also trying the combination of OP+ZK and constantly iterating.
Data source: https://l2 b eat.com/scaling/summary
Layer 2 Gas Fee situation
The handling fee of a few yuan for a single transaction may be considered a small amount for OG who are early exposed to web3.0, but it is still too expensive for Mass Adpotion.
Data source: https://l2 fees.info/
Income
Data source: https://cryptofees.info/, select Layer 1 and Layer 2 for category, and select the four public chains in the picture for blockchain.
3.2 TPS
The earliest TPS of Ethereum was 108. Theoretically, the TPS of Layer 2 can exceed 100,000 transactions/second (TON). However, there are currently no applications of this level, which is also a cause for concern.
Data Sources:https://chainspect.app/dashboard/tps
The current maximum real-time TPS on Layer 2 is less than 50.
Data Sources:https://chainspect.app/dashboard/tps?tag=layer_2
4. Issues that remain to be resolved
Is Ethereum’s liquidity fragmented due to multiple different Layer 2s? Potential solutions are serializer sharing, decentralized serializers, etc.
CM: It is not easy for money from chain A to go to chain B. The concept of Layer 2 is a service layer. Arb mainly focuses on derivatives led by Gmx. The market of Layer 2 is relatively small. At the beginning, the task of Layer 2 is the business details of Ethereum. Assigned to Layer 2. The solution now is to solve it through the application layer. To solve the experience problem through cross-chain applications, there will inevitably be a separation of funds from the perspective of the chain, mainly due to security issues.
DZ: It seems that Layer 2 has increased a lot recently? Are Layer 2 expectations building? Can the fee be reduced immediately after applying for 4844? This will lead to some changes in the landscape, such as TRONs USDT moving to Ethereum Layer 2.
Appendix—Knowledge Popularization
1. Network upgrades and forks
In the development process of the Ethereum protocol, network upgrades and forks have the same meaning. They are both changes to the Ethereum protocol and the addition of new rules (in the form of EIP), which can be planned or unplanned. But the meaning of a hard fork is different. It means that this network update is not fully backwards compatible and may even change the existing functionality of deployed contracts and invalidate some previous transactions.
2. Introduction to EIP/ERC
Main reference sources:https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1, namely EIP-1
2.1 EIP classification
EIPs can be divided into three broad categories:
Standards Track EIP: This type of EIP describes any changes that affect most or all Ethereum implementations, or any changes or additions that affect the interoperability of applications using Ethereum. Simply put, it is any EIP that will change all or most implementation details of Ethereum. It can be subdivided into the following categories:
Core: refers to modifications to the consensus that may lead to forks (such as EIP-5, EIP-101, etc.), as well as changes that are not necessarily consensus but may be related to the core development of Ethereum;
Networking: Refers to changes surrounding the Ethereum communications dev p2p (EIP-8) and Light Ethereum Subprotocol, as well as proposed improvements to the Whisper and swarm network protocol specifications.
Interface: refers to modifications to Ethereum client API/RPC definitions and standards, improvements to language-level standards such as calling method names and contract ABI.
ERC: refers to application-level standards and conventions. It includes Token standards, name registration, URI schemes, account abstraction, etc.
Meta EIP (Meta Proposal EIP): This type of EIP makes changes around the Ethereum process (or events in the process), including modifications to process modifications, user guides, decision-making processes, development environments and tools, etc. Because this modification requires community users to comply with it, community consensus needs to be reached.
Informational EIP (Information Proposal EIP): This type of EIP is a non-standard improvement that does not propose new features. It only proposes design issues and opinions on the general guidelines or information of the Ethereum community, and does not necessarily represent the consensus or suggestions of the Ethereum community.
Currently, the EIP repository has separated ERC and EIP. The EIP-7329 proposal proposes to split the ERC specification from the EIP repository into a new repository so that only the core protocol EIP is retained. Therefore, the current EIP repository is aimed at standardizing Ethereum itself and the protocols built on top of it. Track past and ongoing improvements to Ethereum in the form of EIPs. The ERC (Ethereum Request for Comment) repository is for the standardized Ethereum application layer, which tracks past and ongoing improvements to application standards in the form of ERC. ERC has produced many well-known ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1155, etc.
2.2 EIP review process
Idea Idea-Pre-draft ideas. This is not tracked in the EIP repository.
DraftDraft- The first formal tracking phase in the development of the EIP. When properly formatted, the EIP is merged into the EIP repository by the EIP editor.
ReviewReview- The EIP author marks the EIP as ready and requests peer review.
Last CallLast Call- This is the final review window for transfer to the previous EIP. The EIP editor will assign Last Call status and set the review end date (last-call-deadline), usually 14 days later.
If necessary normative changes result during this period, the EIP will revert to Review.
Final version- This EIP represents the final standard. The final EIP is final and should only be updated to correct errata and add non-normative clarifications.
The PR that moves the EIP from the last invocation to the final invocation should not contain any changes other than status updates. Any content or editorial proposed changes should be submitted separately from and prior to this status update PR.
StagnantDraft-Any EIPLast Call that is in either Review or inactive for 6 months or more will be moved to Stagnant. The author or EIP editor can recover from this state by moving the EIP back to Draft or an earlier state. If not resurrected, the proposal may remain this way forever.
EIP authors are notified of any algorithm changes to their EIP status
Withdrawn-EIP The author has withdrawn the proposed EIP. This status is final and cannot be resurrected using this EIP number. If the idea is continued later, it will be considered a new proposal.
Living - A special status of an EIP that is designed to be continuously updated and does not reach a final state. The most famous of these is EIP-1.
references
Ethereum Cancun upgrade explained: EIP list and dates
Rollup Economics: We overestimated the impact of EIP-4844 on scalability
Vitalik: What exactly is Danksharding? - Shenchao TechFlow
Danksharding is a new sharding design proposed for Ethereum. What exactly can this technology bring?
Ethereum White Paper - ethereum.org
An introductory paper to Ethereum, published in 2013 before the launch of Ethereum.
Binance Research Report: An in-depth explanation of the decentralized sorter
The cornerstone of Layer 2 security, developing native token usage scenarios.
An in-depth understanding of Ethereum’s Verkle tree - HackerNoon
The direction of the future Ethereum roadmap is very obvious—it revolves around service Rollup.
A brief description of the Walker tree and how it will be used to upgrade Ethereum
Walker tree ("Vector commitment"and"Merkle Trees") is a data structure that can be used to upgrade Ethereum nodes so that they can no longer store large amounts of state data without losing the ability to verify blocks.
An article discussing the current status of sorters
A non-complete guide to rollup sorters
Gas is the fuel for transactions and smart contract execution on the Ethereum blockchain. It represents the computational work required to process these operations and is priced in small denominations of Ether called gwei (1 gwei = 10^-9 ETH).
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