Analysis of Ethereum Technology Development Trends and Opportunities

Looking back at history, the cutting-edge technology discussions within the Ethereum developer community often evolve into everyday application products, such as DEX, lending, rollups, and DA, etc. This evolution contains opportunities for investment布局. This article will explore future development directions and potential opportunities from the perspectives of the Ethereum roadmap, the recent DevCon conference, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade.

Ethereum Roadmap Analysis

The Ethereum roadmap includes several phases: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. The focus of each phase is as follows:

1. The Merge: Completing the transition from PoW to PoS, improving the consensus protocol.
2. The Surge: Focused on improving scalability and enhancing the underlying support for rollups.
3. The Scourge: Addressing MEV-related issues, such as builder centralization and capturing MEV value from LST.
4. The Verge: Changing the underlying data structure from Merkle tree to Verkle tree, advancing the Snarkification of the EVM.
5. The Purge: Reduce node storage and state maintenance pressure through data deletion or archiving.
6. The Splurge: Implement cutting-edge improvements, including EVM optimization, account abstraction, and cryptographic applications.

Key Points of DevCon Conference

The recent DevCon conference discussed several important topics:

1. Beam Chain: Proposed underlying improvement plans, including Snarkification and improved block generation, expected to take 5 years to complete.
2. Rollup Interoperability: Discuss solutions to address the liquidity fragmentation and interaction difficulties between rollups.
3. L2 Technology Maturity: Currently, only a few projects have reached Stage 1, while most are still in Stage 0.
4. Other hot topics: chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptographic applications, etc.

Pectra Upgrade Highlights

The Pectra upgrade scheduled for completion in Q1 2025 includes several important improvements:

1. EIP-7702: Allows all EOA accounts to temporarily convert to smart contract accounts, improving user experience.
2. EIP-7691: Increase the number of blobs per block to further reduce rollup costs.
3. EIP-7251: Increase the staking limit from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether, optimizing validator management.

Future Opportunities

Based on the above technological changes, the following areas may nurture important opportunities:

1. Rollup interoperability:

   • Based rollup: Achieve sequencing through L1 to ensure the atomicity of interactions between L2.
   • Shared sequencer: L2 shared sequencer enables interaction.
   • Cross-chain intents: Utilize intents to meet cross-rollup needs.

2. Account Abstraction:

   • The implementation of EIP-7702 brings new opportunities for the AA project.
   • By combining chain abstraction and intents, complex cross-chain interaction functions may be built.
   • After the Pectra upgrade, early participants in EIP-7702 may gain a growth advantage.

3. Cryptography Applications:

   • The zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are gradually maturing.
   • The combined application of ZKP with technologies such as MPC and FHE.
   • Consumer applications such as ZK Email, zkTLS, and other verification-type applications may gain more adoption.
   • Concerns regarding compliance for privacy applications may decrease.

These technological developments and upgrades will bring new opportunities and challenges to the Ethereum ecosystem, which are worth close attention and in-depth study.