The Ethereum Vision

The need for upgrades

The Ethereum protocol that launched in 2015 has had incredible success. But the Ethereum community always expected that a few key upgrades would be necessary to unlock Ethereum's full potential.

High demand is driving up transaction fees that make Ethereum expensive for the average user. The disk space needed to run an Ethereum client is growing at a fast rate.

Ethereum has a set of upgrades that address these problems and more. This set of upgrades was originally called 'Serenity' and 'Eth2,' and they've been an active area of research and development since 2014.

• View a 2022 blog post: The Hitchhikers Guide to Ethereum(opens in a new tab)
• View a 2021 blog post on the Ethereum Protocol Updates(opens in a new tab)
• View a 2021 blog post on the Ethereum roadmap evolution(opens in a new tab)
• View a 2015 blog post discussing 'Serenity'(opens in a new tab)
• View a 2014 blog post detailing proof of stake(opens in a new tab)

Now that the technology is ready, these upgrades will re-architect Ethereum to make it more scalable, secure, and sustainable - to make life better for existing users and entice new ones. All while preserving Ethereum's core value of decentralization.

This means there's no on-switch for scalability. Improvements will ship incrementally over time.

Understanding the Ethereum vision

Scalability

Ethereum needs to be able to handle more transactions per second without increasing the size of the nodes in the network. Nodes are vital network participants who store and run the blockchain. Increasing node size isn't practical because only those with powerful and expensive computers could do it. To scale, Ethereum needs more transactions per second, coupled with more nodes. More nodes means more security.

Layer 2 rollups scale Ethereum by moving transactions off-chain and only posting summary data to Ethereum. This batching increases Ethereum's throughput while drastically reducing costs for users.

Rollups need low-cost storage on layer 1 to make transactions as cheap as possible for users. This will be provided in the form of blobs attached to Ethereum blocks. Eventually, many blobs will be attached to Ethereum blocks, providing cheap storage for many rollups. More on Danksharding

Security

The planned upgrades improve Ethereum's security against coordinated attacks.

In proof-of-stake additional security comes from greater crypto-economic disincentives against attack. This is because, in proof-of-stake, the validators who secure the network must stake significant amounts of ETH into the protocol. If they try and attack the network, the protocol can automatically destroy their ETH. More on proof of stake

However, it is also important that upgrades that protect validators against denial-of-service attacks, enhance their anonymity, and separate block building and block propagation are implemented soon. These upgrades protect individual validators and the network as a whole against liveness attacks and censorship. More on proof-of-stake

Staking also means you don't need to invest in elite hardware to participate directly in consensus. This should encourage more people to become a validator, increasing the network's decentralization and decreasing the attack surface area.

You can become a validator by staking your ETH. More on nodes

Sustainability

Ethereum is a green blockchain with strong crypto-economic security.

Ethereum is now a green blockchain. The energy consumption was reduced by ~99.95% when proof-of-work was swapped for proof-of-stake. More on mining

Ethereum is now secured via staking, not computing power. More on staking

This sustainability boost also brings security benefits - staked ether makes it much more expensive to attack the chain than under proof-of-work, but less expensive to secure it as less new ETH has to be issued to pay validators than miners.