Vitalik Buterin Unveils ‘The Splurge,’ Pushing EVM Advancements

• Ethereum (ETH) has made a nearly 5% surge in the last 24 hours following an extensive update on “The Splurge” by co-founder Vitalik Buterin. 
• This phase is reported to be an endgame of the multistage transformation following the successful implementations in the previous phases, such as the Verge and Purge.

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has, in the latest blog post, unveiled a new update on “The Splurge,” stressing the goals, the problem it solves, and how it works.

Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 6: The Splurgehttps://t.co/OabLldVCqj— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 29, 2024

Firstly, “The Splurge” is reported to be the final installment of Ethereum’s multi-stage transformation. Prior to this stage, Ethereum had gone through a variety of phases, including Merge, Surge, Verge, and Purge, as each addressed a peculiar aspect of the platform’s broader evolution. According to Buterin, The Splurge is meant to present a significant opportunity for the enhancement of Ethereum’s foundational structure while providing solutions to technical bottlenecks that affect the growth of the blockchain.

Goals of “The Splurge” and EOF Introduction

In the post analyzed by CNF, Buterin outlined four main goals expected to be achieved by this phase:

• Ensure that the EVM is brought to a performant and stablecoin endgame state. 
• Ensure that account abstraction is brought into the protocol, enabling users to benefit from much more secure and convenient accounts. 
• Ensure that transaction fees are optimized to increase scalability while reducing risk. 
• Explore advanced cryptography that could make Ethereum far better in the long run. 

In a more specific context, this phase would witness an upgrade that would optimize the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and offset the analysis and efficiency challenges it currently faces using EVM Object Format (EOF). Meanwhile, the EOF would simplify higher-level programming and enhance the efficiency of other layer 2 solutions. The introduction of EOF would also make it easier to embark on further upgrades. According to Buterin, EOF has been scheduled for inclusion in the next hard fork.

The main tradeoff in EVM is L1 complexity versus infrastructure complexity. EOF is a significant amount of code to add to EVM implementations, and the static code checks are pretty complex. In exchange, however, we get simplifications to higher-level languages, simplifications to EVM implementations, and other benefits. Arguably, a roadmap that prioritizes continued improvement to the Ethereum L1 would include and build on EOF.

What to Expect

In the blog post, Buterin also pointed out that “The Splurge” phase would ensure a significant improvement to EIP-1559 which was activated on Ethereum in 2021. According to him, this upgrade greatly improved the average block inclusion time. However, the current implementation is imperfect. To him, the formula is slightly flawed as it targets around 50-53% full blocks instead of 50% blocks. In addition to this, the EIP-1559 does not adjust fast enough in extreme conditions.

Later, EIP-4844 was introduced to address the first concern of a slightly flawed formula. However, the second concern was never addressed. Fascinatingly, Buterin also highlighted that the network has other weaknesses that could be solved in this phase.

There are other weaknesses of Ethereum resource pricing that are independent of EIP-1559, but which could be solved by tweaks to EIP-1559. A major one is average case vs worst case discrepancies: resource prices in Ethereum have to be set to be able to handle the worst case, where a block’s entire gas consumption takes up one resource, but average-case use is much less than this, leading to inefficiencies.

Reacting to this update, ETH has surged by 4.6% in the last 24 hours to trade at $2.6k.

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