Key Points
- Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, emphasizes the importance of focusing on layer-2 (L2) decentralized applications and solutions.
- The successful Dencun hard fork has paved the way for greater scalability and reduced costs in the Ethereum network.
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, is advocating for a greater focus on the development of layer-2 (L2) decentralized applications and solutions, following the successful implementation of the Dencun hard fork.
At the ETH Global’s Pragma London event on March 14, Buterin celebrated the completion of the network upgrade which allows L2 rollups to scale by reducing costs associated with submitting cryptographic proofs to Ethereum’s base layer.
Embracing Rollup Scaling
“We have officially hit basic rollup scaling, but we need to keep in mind that things will be incremental from here,” Buterin addressed a large audience at the Christ Church Spitalfields venue.
The event attracted over 500 attendees and a hackathon over the weekend, with Buterin's presence being a major highlight towards the end of the day’s program of speakers.
Buterin also discussed his well-known Ethereum roadmap following its successful transition to proof-of-stake consensus after The Merge in 2022.
The co-founder acknowledged that many of the milestones he’d laid out were primarily engineering tasks, some of which were achieved when Dencun was finalized.
Dencun incorporated Ethereum improvement proposal (EIP-4844), which modifies how Ethereum rollups store data on mainnet.
Several layer-2 rollups aggregate and process transactions off-chain and submit a summary proof of these transactions to the Ethereum blockchain.
EIP-4844 introduced a new method for rollups to add cheaper data to blocks by introducing blob space as a replacement for using call data for storage.
Using call data to store cryptographic proofs of off-chain bundled transactions has been historically expensive because all Ethereum nodes must process the data that lives on-chain indefinitely.
Proto-danksharding, named after the researchers who proposed EIP-4844, allows rollups to send and attach data blobs to blocks.
The data is not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is deleted automatically after 18 days.
Ethereum's Evolution
Ethereum has been in constant evolution over the past decade, and Buterin emphasized that its ecosystem needs to shift its approach to significantly impact the internet and traditional financial systems.
Buterin views the first decade of Ethereum as an inwardly focused period, reflecting on how the ecosystem was developing things for itself.
“The tech geeks were trying to satisfy tech geeks and create beautiful technology. The second decade needs to see Ethereum breaking out and having a big impact on the world.”
The Dencun hard fork has contributed to this narrative, allowing the Ethereum ecosystem to shift away from a layer 1-centric focus.
Buterin also expects to see Ethereum’s base layer moving away from a period of rapid change to one more focused on maintenance.
“We’re on the decelerating side of things. I actually think the biggest changes are behind us, which is amazing.”
While the Ethereum co-founder admits that L1 changes will continue to be part of the development of the ecosystem, an L2-centric mindset should dominate moving forward, focusing on application developers.
Buterin stated that the ecosystem has created a wealth of tools to build DApps, chief among them being zero-knowledge proofs.
“They’re able to build applications that are much more scalable and to build applications that do a better job of preserving users’ privacy. And the ease of doing that has increased massively compared to five years ago.”
Buterin also urged developers to adopt an “Ethereum 2.0” approach to development that utilizes contemporary tools and protocols like L2 rollups to tap into improved privacy, security, and performance benefits.
