Analysis of Ethereum Technology Development Trends and Future Opportunities

Looking back at the history of the Ethereum developer community, many cutting-edge technology discussions have eventually evolved into everyday application products, such as DEX, lending, rollup, and DA, etc. This also provides opportunities for investment layout. This article will outline and discuss key information from the early 2025 Ethereum roadmap, the recent DevCon conference, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade, among other technical discussions.

Ethereum Roadmap

The Ethereum roadmap has always been an important reference for observing the future development direction, including stages such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.

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

• The Surge: Focus on future scalability, improving from the ground up to better serve rollups. EIP-4844 is now live, with future priorities including PeerDAS to reduce node pressure and cross-rollup interactions.

• The Scourge: mainly addresses MEV-related issues, including excessive concentration of builders and the capture of MEV value by large LSTs.

• The Verge: Including the transition from Merkle tree to Verkle tree and the Snarkification of EVM.

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

• The Splurge: Some more cutting-edge improvements, including EVM underlying, account abstraction, and other cryptographic applications like VDF (, etc.

Key Points of the DevCon Conference

The DevCon conference discussed current issues and possible solutions, with the most notable topic being Beam Chain. It proposed many underlying improvements, including snarkification of the underlying layer, improvements in block generation, and staking, among others. However, the roadmap is expected to take about 5 years to complete, so it doesn't require too much attention for now.

The topic related to Rollups remains hot, mainly discussing the issues of liquidity fragmentation and interactivity between rollups. The maturity of L2 technology is also under scrutiny, with only Optimism and Arbitrum entering Stage 1) with permissioned fraud proof (, while most L2 projects are still in Stage 0) with centralized upgrades and no fraud proof, etc. (.

In addition, topics such as chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptographic applications, and future upgrades were also discussed in depth.

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Pectra Upgrade

The Pectra upgrade expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025 includes multiple transformations from the underlying layer to the user end:

1. EIP-7702: AA Further develop EIP-4337 to grant all EOA accounts the ability to "temporarily" convert to smart contract accounts, improving user experience with ) single-signature multiple transactions, 0 gas, etc. This may increase security risks such as signature phishing, requiring products like wallets to be synchronized and modified. Overall, this will bring new opportunities to the AA project.

2. EIP-7691: Increase the number of blobs The plan is to adjust the target value of the number of blobs per block from 3 to 6, and increase the maximum from 6 to 9. This will further reduce rollup costs, enhance the competitiveness of Ethereum DA, and benefit rollup-type projects.

3. EIP-7251: Increase staking limit The plan is to raise the current staking cap of 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. This will allow staking service providers and large holders to consolidate ETH into fewer nodes, reducing the number of validators.

Future Opportunities

1. Interoperability between Rollups The community has proposed different solutions to address liquidity and interoperability issues between rollups:

   • Based rollup: Achieve ordering functionality through L1 to ensure the atomicity of interactions between L2s using this functionality.
   • Shared sequencer: A group of sequencers in L2 share to complete interactions.
   • Cross-chain intents: Use intents to meet cross-rollup needs.

   Currently, Spire Labs' Based Stack is expected to launch in Q1 2025; shared sequencer solutions such as Astria, Espresso, and Polygon AggLayer are being iteratively launched; ERC-7683 has begun to be used to address cross-chain liquidity issues; Optimism has introduced ERC-7802 to support a unified standard for assets within the superchain ecosystem and facilitate liquidity transfer. These solutions may compete in the market in 2025.

2. Account Abstraction The activation of EIP-7702 will provide new opportunities for the AA project. By combining features like chain abstraction and intents, it may enable the construction of more complex cross-chain or multi-chain interaction capabilities. The Pectra upgrade could be the last chance to validate PMF in the AA track, and early participating teams in EIP-7702 such as Zerodev( may experience a new wave of growth.

3. Cryptographic Applications In terms of technology, zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are gradually maturing, and ZKP combined with MPC, FHE, etc. may lead to more application combinations. Cutting-edge technologies such as indistinguishable obfuscation )iO( may receive more attention.

In terms of applications, ZK Email ), especially implementations based on Aztec Noir (, and zkTLS and other verification-type applications may gain more adoption. Recent events, such as OFAC's sanctions against Tornado Cash being deemed overreach, may reduce concerns about the compliance of privacy-related applications.

![Ethereum roadmap, opportunities in DevCon and Pectra upgrades])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-d4de617690bfe95aba8fc5c4a1d1db9a.webp(