Ethereum's Strategic Update: Scaling Layer 1 and Beyond

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a significant update to its strategic initiatives, focusing on scaling Layer 1 (L1), scaling data blobs, and enhancing user experience without compromising security. This update follows the reorganization of the Foundation’s research and development teams to better align with these goals, according to the Ethereum Blog.

Leadership and Initiatives

To spearhead the L1 scaling efforts, Marius van der Wijden joins Ansgar Dietrichs and Tim Beiko as co-leaders. Their combined expertise is expected to drive Ethereum’s scaling strategy while considering the network's constraints. A key short-term objective is increasing Ethereum’s mainnet gas limit to 100 million per block, with recent enhancements already pushing this limit to 45 million.

Gas Limit Expansion

Parithosh Jayanthi, alongside Nethermind's PerfNet team, is leading efforts to incrementally increase the gas limit. This initiative aims to improve the network’s throughput while ensuring client robustness even amidst potential network instability. The recent Berlinterop event showcased significant performance improvements, setting the stage for future expansions.

Historical Data Management

The History Expiry project, managed by Matt Garnett, has made strides in reducing the historical data footprint of Ethereum nodes. The recent implementation of Partial History Expiry has minimized the storage requirements for full nodes, paving the way for further data pruning with Rolling History Expiry.

Block-Level Access Lists

Block-Level Access Lists (BALs), a candidate for the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, promise to enhance Ethereum’s scalability. Led by Toni Wahrstaetter, BALs will allow parallel transaction execution and state root computation, optimizing disk access and improving node sync efficiency.

Benchmarking and Pricing

Efforts to align gas costs with computational overhead are underway, led by Ansgar Dietrichs. By improving benchmarking infrastructure and repricing operations, the Foundation aims to make block execution times more consistent, enabling further gas limit increases.

zkEVM and Future Prospects

Kevaundray Wedderburn is developing a zkEVM attester client, which could allow Ethereum nodes to validate transactions using zk proofs. This development could significantly reduce computational costs and enable substantial increases in the gas limit.

RPC Performance and Recruitment

With increasing throughput, the Ethereum Foundation is addressing the distinct challenges faced by different node types, particularly RPC nodes. The Foundation is actively hiring a Performance Engineering Lead to bolster expertise in optimizing node performance, with applications closing on August 10.