In 2023, especially in the second half, some public chains were in full swing. For example, the explosion of the Bitcoin ecosystem, the strong rise of the Solana ecosystem, and the strong performance of INJ… I saw someone comment on Twitter describing the situation of Ethereum, which is quite interesting.

That is to say, Ethereum appears to be relatively passive compared to other public chains that are actively making progress. However, this is not entirely true. Ethereum has its own development roadmap. In my opinion, Ethereum simply does not engage in unnecessary competition and developed at its own pace. In 2024, Ethereum will undergo several major upgrades that will have a positive impact on all aspects of the platform. Now, let’s take a closer look at the key components of these major initiatives.

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Ethereum’s roadmap in 2024 will roughly follow the following stages:ERC-4337->EIP-4844->EIP-3074->EIP-5003。These major updates will play an important role in further improving the scalability and user experience of Ethereum, while also allowing Ethereum to continue to maintain its competitiveness in the fierce competition.

ERC-4337: A major change in smart contract wallets

Currently, the Ethereum account system consists of externally owned accounts (EOA) and smart contract accounts. However, user-operated EOAs have often posed challenges in terms of usability and security. Users’ wallets are frequently hacked, and funds disappear inexplicably, highlighting the lack of security in EOAs.

To address this issue, ERC-4337 proposes an account abstraction solution that avoids the need for changes in the consensus layer protocol. Instead of introducing new protocol functionality or modifying the underlying transaction type, this proposal introduces a new protocol called UserOperation, which facilitates higher-level pseudo-transaction objects.

The main advantage of ERC-4337 is that it significantly enhances the end-user experience while enabling new possibilities, such as No Gas transactions or social login and password recovery.

Key features of the ERC-4337 proposal include:

Enhanced security: Integrating more complex logic into the wallet allows users to set transaction conditions, such as multi-factor authentication or daily spending limits, for added security.
User-friendly: The wallet simplifies interaction for non-technical users, making the Ethereum ecosystem more accessible.
Pay gas fees in tokens: Users have the convenience of paying transaction fees using tokens other than ETH.

EIP-4844: Improve L2 efficiency

We know that the emergence of L2 is to solve the scalability problem of the Ethereum main network. With the continuous development of L2 in recent years, the total amount of data generated by each L2 has become very large. Although the transaction fees on L2 are very cheap compared to Ethereum, the total transaction fees spent by all users on L2 is still very amazing.

EIP-4844, often referred to as “proto-danksharding,” is a major step toward solving Ethereum’s scalability issues. It introduces a new transaction type that allows for “shard blobs” – temporary data that can be consumed by L2 (such as rollups). EIP-4844 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4844 ) introduces a new transaction type to Ethereum that accepts “blob” data and persists it in beacon nodes for a short period of time.

Shard blocks do not contain transactions executed in Ethereum blocks, but only “blocks of data,” and L2 is responsible for using that data space to create a secure and more scalable experience for its users.

EIP-4844 proposes separating trade calculator and storage costs in order to improve scalability in Ethereum Layer 2 (L2). Instead of using “CALLDATA” to permanently store data, blobs are used, which are pruned after a predefined period of time.

The data blocks do not need to be available indefinitely, but only for a specific period, such as 1-3 months. This timeframe allows L2 to ensure that at least one honest participant rebuilds the state, challenges or replaces a bad sequencer, and then the data can be pruned.

Implementing EIP-4844 greatly facilitates the scaling of Rollups, allowing them to initially scale to 0.25 MB per slot. It also introduces a separate fee market for blobs, which helps to keep transaction fees very low.

This approach directly benefits users, as everyone can enjoy lower transaction fees.

Key features of the ERC-4844 proposal include:

Lower Tier 2 Costs: Encourage wider adoption by making Tier 2 solutions more economical by lowering data costs.
Increased transaction throughput: This can lead to a more scalable network capable of processing more transactions per second.
Enhanced user experience: Ethereum’s overall user experience is significantly improved through faster and cheaper transactions.

EIP-3074: Simplify transactions and optimize user experience

EIP-3074 introduces significant changes to the authorization and execution of Ethereum transactions. The proposal enables users to authorize third parties to execute transactions on their behalf through a new type of operation. By updating Ethereum’s EOA (Externally Owned Account), EIP-3074 allows smart contracts to approve transactions initiated from user accounts.

In practice, EIP-3074 streamlines complex operations by allowing them to be performed with a single signature, eliminating the need for multiple approvals. This greatly enhances the user experience and enables seamless execution of complex operations. End users will have the ability to send bulk transactions, expired transactions, and more.

However, achieving these optimizations requires modifying the Ethereum protocol to use two new EVM “opcodes”: AUTH and AUTHCALL . Because the protocol needs to be modified, this proposal will have certain obstacles to community acceptance.

Key features of the ERC-3074 proposal include:

Smart contract wallet: Through wallet recovery solutions, the probability of users losing funds will be greatly reduced.
Batch transactions: save gas costs.
Automation: Automate transactions with smart contract accounts.
Simplify user interaction: It is especially beneficial for complex DApp interactions, reducing user steps and gas costs.
Increased developer flexibility: This enables more creative and efficient smart contract designs.
Potential security enhancements: While it introduces new security considerations, it also provides the opportunity for more robust security mechanisms.

EIP-5003: Network resource optimization

Regarding the EIP-5003 proposal, we need to look at it together with the EIP-3074 proposal so that we can see it more clearly.

On the one hand, EIP-3074 provides an opcode to delegate EOA signature authority to smart contracts. On the other hand, while authorizing smart contracts in EIP-3074, EIP-5003 completely migrates the signature key of Ethereum EOA accounts to smart contract accounts.

The key features of the ERC-5003 proposal include:

Improved security: This EIP is combined with EIP-3074, addressing its shortcomings and ensuring that the migration of account abstractions does not create new attack vectors.
Migration from EOA: This EIP is the final migration from EOA.

Conclusion

In summary, Ethereum has not remained idle while other public chains have made continuous efforts. Instead, it has carefully planned its future roadmap based on its own established development path. The upcoming major updates this year indicate that Ethereum will systematically address important issues such as scalability, security, accessibility, and usability to ensure the network’s long-term viability.

Looking ahead to 2024, Ethereum continues to hold great promise!

Alright, today this article briefly reports on several major updates that Ethereum will implement in 2024. They will together push Ethereum into a new situation. We hope this article will be helpful for your future understanding of Ethereum.

Finally, thank you for your time.

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