As the Ethereum network moves toward the Dencun hard fork in Q1 2024, the community is looking forward to a series of important improvement proposals (EIPs). These proposals are not only related to the future direction of Ethereum, but may also have a profound impact on the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. This article will explore the details and potential impacts of these proposals in detail to provide readers with a comprehensive understanding.
The latest Ethereum all-core developer meeting finalized the schedule for the next mainnet hard fork Dencun upgrade. It is important to note that, barring major issues, Ethereum developers plan to fork Ethereum's public testnet on the following dates:
#Goerli: January 17th
Sepolia: January 30th
Holesky: February 7th
This will be Goerli’s last Join the beta program at a time as the network is expected to be deprecated.
They also discussed what’s coming next—the as-yet-unnamed Prague/Electra upgrade. The Ethereum community is considering whether to focus on one large core feature improvement (which may take a year of work) or to build an upgrade around multiple smaller improvements (which may be implemented by the end of 2024). This decision will depend on discussion and consensus among community members, as well as consideration of the overall development strategy of the Ethereum ecosystem. Regardless of which path is chosen, it is hoped that the final upgrade will bring higher performance and a better user experience to the Ethereum network.
A decision on the above issue will be made after the new year, but for now, here are some improvements worth watching after the 2024 Dencun upgrade:
EIP-4844 is a major project in the Dencun EIP and is the focus of many news reports in 2023.
StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson pointed out that this upgrade will reduce data availability costs for all L2. So this is something that Starknet is very much looking forward to so that users can reduce costs.
Lucas Henning, CTO of Web3 wallet developer Suku, called this “a year of groundbreaking improvements for Ethereum.” EIP-4844 is a transformative technology that will reduce rollup gas fees by up to 100 times.
Another focus of Henning’s focus is taking advantage of improvements in account abstraction: ERC-4337 and its extension ERC-6900.
ERC is a subset of EIP that focuses specifically on token standards within the Ethereum ecosystem. They define rules for token implementations to ensure interoperability. Unlike some EIPs that modify the core protocol, ERC usually does not require a hard fork.
ERC-4337 went live in March, and Henning believes that the concept of account abstraction will play a key role in the most important user changes.
He said that account abstraction will completely change the way we understand and interact with wallets, making gas transactions the standard, secure social login becoming the new normal, and fundamentally reshaping the Ethereum user experience.
Traditionally, Ethereum has two types of accounts: externally owned accounts (EOA) controlled by private keys and contract accounts controlled by code. Account abstraction blurs this distinction, allowing users to create accounts that function more like smart contracts.
It improves user experience and security and allows for more complex account logic, such as multi-signature wallets or social recovery of lost keys.
ERC-6900 introduces the concept of "entrusted transactions". This standard also does not require changes to the Ethereum mainnet consensus, which allows users the ability to delegate transactions to others on their behalf, for example, to save time and hassle by approving a batch of operations all at once.
This proposal is part of Dencun and aims to introduce new mechanisms for handling temporary or transient storage during smart contract execution.
Traditional storage operations on Ethereum are permanent and consume Gas. This can be inefficient for temporary data that does not need to persist across a transaction.
EIP-1153 is an opcode (operation code) that allows smart contracts to use transient storage - storage that is cleared at the end of transaction execution.
The Uniswap team lobbied for 1153 and wanted it to be in Shapella, but they were unable to gain enough support to reach consensus among core developers. This upgrade is expected to play an important role in improving the capabilities and efficiency of Uniswap’s upcoming v4 protocol.
By enabling temporary storage, EIP-1153 can reduce the gas cost of storing data during contract execution and provide developers with more flexibility when designing smart contracts.
By reducing the burden on permanent storage and minimizing state bloat, EIP-1153 can contribute to the scalability of the entire Ethereum network.
Imagine Ethereum is a huge library with two main parts: the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) part, as people come The reading room that reads books (executing smart contracts), and the Beacon chain (beacon chain) part, which is like a library catalog system that tracks all books and their locations (consensus and coordination of the Ethereum network).
Before EIP-4788, these two parts were somewhat functionally independent. The EVM part does not have direct access to the latest directory; it must rely on indirect methods to understand what is happening in the Beacon chain part.
EIP-4788 proposes placing a "Beacon block root" (the digest or hash tree root of the parent block) in each EVM block. It's like moving from the library's outdated card filing system (which is inefficient and sometimes inaccurate) to a system with real-time, accurate and direct links to the main library database.
In this modern library, whenever a new book is added, moved or removed (Beacon chain update), readers (EVM) can get accurate information immediately. Readers can trust that they are getting the latest information, and library operations (such as executing smart contracts) are more consistent with the overall catalog system (the state of the consensus layer).
All of this happens in a trust-minimized manner, eliminating the need for external oracles to provide this data, thereby reducing potential points of failure or manipulation.
This change is particularly beneficial for liquid staking protocols such as Lido, smart contract-based bridges, and re-staking solutions, as it allows these protocols to access key data such as validator balances and status directly from the consensus layer, thereby Enhance its security and operational efficiency.
EIP-4788 essentially introduces a protocol-level oracle to communicate the consensus state of Ethereum throughout the mainnet.
Misha Komarov, founder of the Nil Foundation, which is deploying zkOracle for Lido, calls it "definitely helpful." He stated that "they need to use the consensus layer state root in the application logic (currently proved through zkLLVM to CasperFFG proof within the execution layer), which is done in the zkOracle design".
EVM operates using a set of opcodes that indicate various operations.
EIP-5656 introduces a new opcode called MCOPY, which is designed to optimize the process of in-memory data copying during smart contract execution.
In the current EVM architecture, copying large data segments using existing opcodes can be inefficient and costly. MCOPY provides a more efficient approach that is expected to reduce the gas charges associated with these operations while improving performance.
Faster memory operations mean contracts will execute faster and developers will have more tools to optimize their smart contracts - especially when dealing with large data structures or complex operations involving memory operations .
In Ethereum, the SELFDESTRUCT opcode allows a smart contract to remove itself from the blockchain. When executed, it removes the contract's code and storage from the state and sends the contract's remaining ether to the specified address.
However, this functionality leads to several issues, including state management complexity and potential security vulnerabilities. By limiting SELFDESTRUCT, Ethereum can better manage its state size, resulting in a more stable and predictable blockchain. This is critical for the long-term scalability and maintenance of the network as it will simplify future Ethereum upgrades.
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