The Future Development of Ethereum 6 The Splurge: Diversified Puzzle Achieving Finality State

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum future blueprint has reached its sixth chapter, "The Splurge". This project is primarily designed to achieve "other" diverse unique goals that do not fit into larger subcategories.

Vitalik stated that since its inception in 2013, Ethereum has undergone multiple upgrades, with each update driving its leadership in smart contracts and decentralized applications (DApps). "The Splurge" is the latest initiative that began in 2023, focusing on enhancing the performance and scalability of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) while addressing current transaction fee economics and cryptographic technology issues.

• Ethereum Blueprint 1 considers modifying consensus to increase final confirmation speed
• Ethereum Blueprint 2: Aiming for 100,000 TPS, reviving off-chain scaling with Plasma, integrating the L2 ecosystem
• Ethereum Blueprint 4 The Verge: Implementing Verkle Trees for stateless verification, allowing Apple Watch to act as a node

The Splurge's Key Objectives

Vitalik explained in the article that The Splurge is not just a simple technical optimization, but it mainly consists of four key objectives aimed at driving Ethereum towards a more stable and performant "final state":

1. Enhancing the performance and stability of the EVM: The goal is to achieve a final state that not only supports the current smart contract ecosystem but also lays the foundation for future efficient cryptographic functions.
2. Built-in support for account abstraction: Promoting more secure and convenient account management for the benefit of every user.
3. Optimizing transaction fee mechanisms: Improving scalability and reducing risks through enhancements.
4. Exploring advanced cryptographic technologies: Leveraging the latest encryption technologies to make the Ethereum protocol more competitive in the long term.

Improving EVM: From Efficiency to Cryptographic Functions

What are the issues?

The current EVM faces challenges in statically analyzing code, impacting performance and making code verification and continuous extension difficult. Additionally, the EVM's efficiency is low when performing many advanced cryptographic operations unless specifically supported by precompilation.

What is the solution?

To address these challenges, the EVM Object Format (EOF) is set to be introduced. Key features of EOF include:

• Isolation of code and data to reduce unnecessary resource consumption.
• Disabling dynamic jumps and allowing only static jumps.
• Introducing explicit subroutine mechanisms to further enhance performance.

In the future, the EVM will also incorporate EVM-MAX for modular arithmetic extensions and Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) functionality, both of which significantly improve the efficiency of cryptographic algorithms. This will make it easier for Ethereum to implement efficient cryptographic techniques such as Montgomery multiplication and elliptic curve encryption.

Account Abstraction: Support for Multifunctional Accounts

Limitations of Current Account Verification Methods

The current Ethereum account system only supports ECDSA verification for elliptic curve digital signature algorithms. Account abstraction aims to integrate more verification methods into the protocol, enabling features like multisig wallets and social recovery wallets to become a reality and allowing users to switch keys more conveniently to enhance security.

Progress of ERC-4337 and EIP-7702

As part of the next hard fork plan, EIP-7702 will expand account abstraction functionality to benefit all accounts, including EOA. ERC-4337 introduces a dual-stage processing of verification and execution to address potential denial-of-service attack risks and introduces "Paymaster" and "Aggregator" functions to support more flexible account management.

Improving EIP-1559: Multi-Dimensional Fuel Mechanism

What are the issues?

Although EIP-1559 introduced in 2021 improved average block processing speed, there are still areas for improvement. The current formula results in around 50-53% block utilization rate, and adaptability in extreme cases remains insufficient. To address these issues, the concept of "multi-dimensional fuel" is introduced to adapt to different resource requirements and reduce the volatility of fuel costs.

Proposals: EIP-7706 and EIP-7623

These proposals introduce separate fuel prices for different resource dimensions to enhance resource efficiency by bridging the gap between average and worst-case scenarios. The multi-dimensional fuel mechanism can also help Ethereum handle future demands for computational resources, such as STARK hash trees, making Ethereum's resource requirements more predictable.

Verifiable Delay Functions (VDF): Improving Randomness Generation

What are the issues?

Currently, Ethereum's randomness generation relies on the RANDAO method, which carries a certain manipulation risk. Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) are a potential solution to this issue, reducing the manipulability of random data generation through their sequentially executed nature.

Mechanism and Progress

The challenge with VDFs lies in avoiding hardware acceleration and unintended parallel optimizations while maintaining the credibility of their randomness in a practical manner. In the future, developing VDF-specific ASICs may be a viable direction but requires extensive research and testing.

Obfuscation Techniques and One-Time Signatures: The Future of Cryptography

Security Needs for Multi-Party Applications

With technological advancements, the demand for smart contracts and multi-party applications is rapidly growing. Obfuscation techniques and one-time signatures offer a highly promising solution that can provide protocols with nearly perfect security and privacy protection.

Application Potential of Cryptographic Techniques

In the future, as Differentiable Indistinguishability Obfuscation and one-time signature technologies mature, Ethereum will be able to apply them to a wider range of privacy and security applications, including private EVMs, decentralized anonymous voting, quantum-safe cryptographic systems, fundamentally changing Ethereum's application scope in privacy, decentralization, and multi-party trust.

The Splurge Will Cure Various Ills

The launch of The Splurge plan marks a comprehensive upgrade for Ethereum in terms of performance, account management, security, and scalability. These proposals not only tackle current technical challenges in the protocol but also open up endless possibilities for Ethereum's future applications and multifunctionality.