Discussion on the Technological Development and Opportunities of Ethereum

Throughout history, the cutting-edge technical discussions within the Ethereum developer community have often evolved into everyday application products, such as DEX, lending, rollups, and DA, among others. This trend not only reflects technological advancement but also implies potential investment opportunities.

At the beginning of 2025, we can gain valuable insights from Ethereum's roadmap, the recent DevCon conference, and upcoming technical discussions such as the Pectra upgrade. This article will outline and discuss these aspects.

Ethereum Roadmap Analysis

The Ethereum roadmap has always been an important reference for predicting future development directions, including several phases such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. Below are the main contents of each phase:

1. The Merge: Completing the merger of the execution layer and the consensus layer, achieving the transition from PoW to PoS. It also includes improvements to the consensus protocol, such as single-slot finality and lowering the validator threshold.

2. The Surge: Focused on enhancing scalability and providing better support for rollups. EIP-4844 has gone live, with future priorities including PeerDAS and cross-rollup interactions.

3. The Scourge: Dedicated to addressing MEV-related issues, including reducing builder centralization and capturing MEV value from large LSTs.

4. The Verge: Plans to change the underlying data structure from Merkle tree to Verkle tree and promote the Snarkification of EVM.

5. The Purge: Reduce the storage and state maintenance pressure on nodes by deleting or archiving historical data while cleaning up technical debt.

6. The Splurge: Covers more cutting-edge improvements, including EVM layer optimization, account abstraction, and other cryptographic applications (such as VDF).

Highlights of DevCon Conference

The recent DevCon conference discussed current issues and possible solutions. Among them, Beam Chain has attracted widespread attention, although it has been jokingly referred to as "Ethereum 3.0", its implementation is expected to take about 5 years.

Rollup-related topics remain popular, focusing on issues such as liquidity fragmentation and interaction difficulties between rollups. In addition, the technological maturity of L2 projects is also under scrutiny, with only a few projects currently reaching a higher stage.

The meeting also covered topics such as chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptographic applications, and future upgrades.

Pectra Upgrade Highlights

The Pectra upgrade, expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, includes several important transformations:

1. EIP-7702 (AA): Grants all EOA accounts the ability to temporarily convert to smart contract accounts, improving user experience but potentially increasing security risks.

2. EIP-7691: Increase the target blob count per block from 3 to 6, and the maximum value from 6 to 9, which is beneficial for rollup projects.

3. EIP-7251: Increase the staking limit from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether, simplifying operations for large staking service providers and whales.

Future Opportunities

Based on the above technological changes and discussions, the following areas may harbor new opportunities:

1. Interoperability between Rollups: Multiple solutions are developing in parallel, including Based rollups, Shared sequencers, and cross-chain intents.

2. Account Abstraction: The implementation of EIP-7702 will bring new opportunities for the AA project, and combining chain abstraction with intents may enable more complex cross-chain interactions.

3. Cryptographic Applications: The zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are becoming increasingly mature, and the combination of ZKP with technologies such as MPC and FHE may lead to new applications. Consumer-side applications like ZK Email and zkTLS may see greater adoption. Recent changes in the regulatory environment may also reduce concerns about privacy-related applications.

These technological developments and discussions paint a blueprint filled with opportunities for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem. With the gradual realization and application of various technologies, we expect to see more innovations and breakthroughs in 2025 and beyond.