Written by: Tia, Techub News

Ups and downs, ups and downs, Or maybe it's "dangerous"...

For Ethereum, this year is an unusual year. There are climaxes after the approval of US spot ETFs, and there are also crises in the face of solana competition and various "anti-Ethereum" remarks. In addition to personnel changes, a researcher previously joined Eigenlayer as a consultant and later resigned from Eigenlayer in order to better develop Ethereum. There’s also the issue of Beam Chain and liquidity fragmentation that was raised at Devcon. Every detail reflects this extraordinary year.

Looking at the Ethereum price trend chart, we already know how many ups and downs it has experienced. From more than 2,000 US dollars at the beginning of the year to more than 4,000 US dollars in March, then back to the beginning of the second word, and then rising to more than 4,000 US dollars again, it is full of drama and uncertainty.

On January 11, 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents showed that the SEC approved the listing of 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs. Riding on the success of ETFs and the expectation of Ethereum’s approval of ETFs, Ethereum It has been soaring all the way, and in just over a month, the price has nearly doubled.

On July 23, the US spot Ethereum ETF was launched. Although the trading volume of the spot Ethereum ETF was booming after its launch, the trading volume exceeded US$200 million in just 45 minutes. However, since the price increase in the first half of the year has included the expectation of the issuance of the Ethereum ETF, the US spot Ethereum ETF was launched and did not achieve excessive growth.

Because there was no sustainable innovation in the industry to support the high price, after the price of Ethereum soared, in August, the price began to fall crazily again. Starting on July 30, the price of Ethereum began a seven-day decline. It fell from a high of $3366 to a low of $2111. What follows is a long sideways movement.

Until Trump won the presidential election, he sang all the way again, raising Ethereum from the beginning of 2 to a maximum of $4170.

7 consecutive days of decline and 7 consecutive days of rise, as well as the roller coaster-like double rise and fall, reflect the extremely high volatility of the crypto market, and also show the emotions of market participants, Anticipation and the impact of external events. (Yes. This is crypto ?️)

Behind the rise and fall is a series of iron logic that has to be acknowledged. For example, the sharp rise in expectations for the listing of the Ethereum ETF after the approval of the Bitcoin ETF at the beginning of the year, such asETFs cannot continue to drive industries that lack real innovation and lasting market demand, resulting in a waterfall-like decline that returns to the original point; another example is the crazy rise in crypto after Trump came to power...

Looking back Looking at the price trend of Ethereum, it is not difficult to find that its ups and downs are not only driven by external macro factors, but technological progress often plays an important role in it. From the launch of Ethereum 2.0, to the implementation of Layer 2 scalability solutions, to the continuous optimization and update of the Ethereum network, every technological breakthrough has become the focus of the market. However, the gains brought about by these improvements do not happen overnight, and are often overshadowed by short-term market sentiment.

Beam Chain

Beam Chain was presented by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake at Devcon in Thailand. Beam Chain is Justin's proposal to redesign the Ethereum consensus layer. This proposal is a further upgrade of Beacon Chain. The main goals are related to MEV, lowering the pledge threshold, achieving fast finality single slot finality, and ZKizing the entire consensus layer. This proposal rides on the breakthrough of SNARK technology and is equivalent to an upgrade to the old Beacon Chain design from 5 years ago.

Dencun Upgrade

The Ethereum Dencun upgrade was launched on March 13, 2024. The hard fork combines two core improvements: Deneb consensus layer and Cancun execution layer updates. The highlight of the upgrade is EIP-4844 Proto-danksharding. Rollup can send transactions, proofs and other data to Layer1 in the form of Blobs. Since Blob is the temporary storage and access of off-chain data, compared with the original calldata, using Blob will make the cost of Rollup much lower. But this also caused a sharp decline in Ethereum’s revenue.

EIP-4844 is a controversial EIP. In the short term, it is indeed the reason for the sharp decline in Ethereum's revenue, and it is also one of the main reasons why Ethereum is criticized; but some people call this EIP "a small step for Sharding, a big step for Ethereum expansion" ”, in the long run, its specific impact is still unknown.

The Dencun upgrade also includes some EIPs that improve the efficiency of Ethereum usage, such as EIP-7516, EIP-6780, EIP-5656, EIP-1153, etc. The specific EIPs included in the Dencun upgrade are detailed in the table below.

EIP-4788

Consensus layer

Improve the information exchange problem between Ethereum execution layer and consensus layer. Prior to EIP-4788, the EVM had no direct access to the latest directory and had to rely on indirect methods to understand what was happening in the beacon chain. EIP-4788 proposes to put the beacon block root (the digest or the hash tree root of the parent block) into every EVM block. In this way, information and data can be transferred without relying on third parties.

EIP-7044

Consensus layer

Improve the withdrawal mechanism of Ethereum pledge

EIP-7045

Consensus layer

Extend the maximum time for Attester to submit proofs.

EIP-7514

Consensus layer

Introduces restrictions on the "epoch churn limit" to limit the growth rate of the number of Ethereum validators.

EIP-4844

Execution layer

EIP-4844, also known as the proto-danksharding proposal, reduces the cost of Gas cost for publishing Layer2 data to the Ethereum mainnet.

EIP-7516

The execution layer

is an opcode that returns the current data blob base cost.

EIP-6780

The execution layer

is an opcode that allows a smart contract to delete itself from the blockchain.

EIP-5656

The execution layer

is an opcode that optimizes the process of copying data in memory

EIP-1153< /p>

The execution layer

is an opcode that allows smart contracts to use transient storage, that is, the storage is cleared at the end of transaction execution.

Pectra upgrade

The Pectra upgrade combines two separate upgrades: the Prague execution layer upgrade and the Electra consensus layer upgrade. The Pectra upgrade precedes the Fusaka upgrade (specifically designed to implement the Verkle transition). The Pectra upgrade is a series of other changes that precede the implementation of the Verkle transition, as Ethereum developers agree that no other substantive changes can be combined with Verkle. Verkle transition represents the migration of all Ethereum state data from the Merkle Patricia tree structure to the Verkle structure. This will enable nodes to generate smaller proofs about state data that can be passed to other nodes more easily, and is a prerequisite for implementing a "stateless client"pieces.

The Pectra upgrade is initially planned to be activated on the mainnet in early 2025. Among them, the more important one is the account abstraction EIP-7702, whose main function is to extend the smart account function to EOA.

EIP-7702 is an improvement of EIP-3074 and was proposed in May 2024. EIP-3074 is the community’s first attempt to explore extending smart account functionality to EOA. Unlike ERC-4337 (which allows smart contracts to behave like user accounts by introducing a smart contract called EntryPoint), if ERC-4337 is a way to achieve account abstraction that does not require changes to the execution layer or consensus layer, EIP-3074 requires an Ethereum hard fork to be implemented. It mainly extends the smart account function to EOA by introducing two operation codes - AUTH and AUTHCALL.

EIP-7702 is a step forward from EIP-3074. Unlike EIP-3074's opcode that implements EOA's smart account mode, with EIP-7702, EOA can now store an address called a "delegation indicator" that points to the smart contract. When a transaction is sent to EOA, it can execute the code on this specified address as if it were its own code, similar to how "delegation calls" work in smart contracts.

EIP-7702, while bringing smart account functionality to EOA, addresses many of the concerns raised by EIP-3074, provides full compatibility with ERC-4337 and a clear upgrade path, and is planned to be Incorporated Pectra upgrade.

Since Pectra will shift its focus to Verkle Tree after the upgrade, EIP-7702 may be the last EIP for account abstraction related upgrades, because after this, there may not be another 2-year window to include Upgrades related to account abstraction.

Other code changes for Pectra so far include improving the experience for users and smart contract developers. For a more detailed introduction to Pectra upgrade, please refer to this article.

Other EIPs

Not all EIPs that pass the review need to be upgraded after a hard fork before they can be used. Ethereum has also passed some major process/standard EIPs this year, such as Cross-chain intent standard ERC-7683 and account abstraction standard ERC-4337 (ERC is a subset of EIP), such changes rely more on the community's recognition of the EIP, that is, whether the community is willing to accept or actively implement it. Some EIPs that require hard fork upgrades before they can be used will also need to wait for acceptance by users, DApps, etc. before they can achieve widespread adoption.use.

Interoperability: Cross-chain/Rollup standards

With the Ethereum Rollup-centered roadmap and the growing number of various types of Layer1, the liquidity on the chain is fragmented and the largest on-chain One of the advantages, composability, has also been gradually lost with the situation of fragmentation.

Interoperability has two gradient problems that need to be solved: one is how to realize assets across chains quickly, cheaply and safely, and the second is how to achieve synchronous composability.

Currently, there are many protocols that can implement the first gradient problem. Protocols like Across have greatly improved cross-chain speeds with very low fees. Due to its intent-based architecture, users’ cross-chain security concerns have also been completely transferred to the solver. Currently, some related proposals on cross-chain/Rollup are mainly devoted to solving some preliminary standard issues.

Synchronous composability is subsequently transferred to Based Rollup. Specific proposals related to cross-chain/Rollup are as follows:

ERC-7683

ERC-7683 is an intended cross-chain standard jointly proposed by Across and Uniswap. Through this standard, all Orders that intend to interoperate can all share the solver network.

ERC-7683 combined with ERC-3668 and ERC-3770 will bring preliminary interoperability experience to L2. ERC-7683 creates a unified framework for cross-chain intentions that can be accessed by all solvers; EIP-3370 adds an identification label to the blockchain address, clarifying the specific blockchain network to which the address belongs, and preventing users from sending money to In the wrong network; ERC-3668 CCIP Read has completed off-chain verification well. It provides a security mechanism to obtain off-chain data without additional trust assumptions, and will effectively automatically support L2 compatibility. A light client for the blockchain without requiring any additional configuration from the wallet.

RIP-7755 (L2 calling standard)

RIP-7755 is the L2 calling standard. This POC was launched by the Base research team on October 17 and aims to implement different Ethereum Layer2 Seamless cross-chain interoperability between networks, especially mainstream second-layer networks such as Optimism and Arbitrum. The proof-of-concept for RIP-7755 is for EIP-4788 compliant blockchains and is currently validating the status of the OP Stack chain and Arbitrum.

The above is an overall review of the major events that Ethereum will experience in 2024. Of course, there is much more to Ethereum 2024 than this. It also includes the dispute with Solana, criticism of unclear positioning and centralization,Large institutions began to hold Ethereum spot ETFs (a Michigan pension fund disclosed holding more than 10 million US dollars in Ethereum spot ETFs), and large institutions launched tokenized products on Ethereum (UBS launched an Ethereum-based token in Singapore money market fund uMINT, Wall Street giant Guggenheim tokenized $20 million in commercial paper on Ethereum), and after facing the crisis, Buterin issued 6 An article about the Ethereum roadmap, AMA answers on Ethereum research Reddit, etc...

And in the end everything points to an unanswered question, where is the future?