Vitalik Buterin outlines Ethereum’s development after the ETH2 merge

In roughly six months, the Ethereum mainnet will merge with the second version of the protocol, after which the network is expected to undergo a number of significant changes. This was stated by Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency, at the World Blockchain Conference 2021, according to 8BTC.

He called the merge “minimalist.” In his words, during this process developers will not be able to implement most of the functions necessary for the blockchain to work exactly as intended.

“Right now, if you have a deposit in the network on Proof-of-Stake [Ethereum 2.0], you cannot withdraw funds. After the merge you still won’t have such an option. Withdrawals of deposits and staking rewards — that is what will be implemented in the first post-merge hard fork,” Buterin cited.

He explained that there are “a multitude of minor changes” that could be integrated concurrently with the merge, but to speed up the process the developers decided to push them to a later date.

According to Buterin, the next important step will be the implementation of sharding. He stressed that thanks to the sharding of the blockchain and the technology Rollups, the network’s throughput could rise to 100,000 transactions per second in the future.

Developers intend to increase the security of sharding and the network as a whole. In particular, he mentioned the data availability sampling technology (data availability sampling), which will allow nodes to independently verify the accuracy of information stored by shards without having to download it.

The Ethereum team will also continue work on scalability and throughput. For example, the concept of Verkle Trees will allow nodes to verify blocks without needing to occupy additional disk space.

Buterin stated that the EVM will also be upgraded — it will be able to work with more complex cryptographic functions.

“All of this will happen in the near future,” noted the co-founder of Ethereum.

In the long term, the project team intends to work on improving the consensus algorithm and “post-quantum security.” Developers are considering applying the Casper Correct by Construction specifications (CBC Casper) and the zero-knowledge proof protocol ZK-SNARKs.

Buterin noted that developers pay particular attention to protection against attacks using quantum computers. He emphasised that there are solutions to mitigate this threat, and a dedicated team within the Ethereum Foundation is working on it.

As Buterin noted, with the transition to the second version of the protocol the reorganization of the Ethereum blockchain will be difficult.

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