Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is urging a shift in mindset towards building decentralized applications and solutions on layer-2 (L2) following the successful completion of the Dencun hard fork.
During his speech at the ETH Global’s Pragma London event on March 14, Buterin praised the completion of the network upgrade, which allows L2 rollups to achieve scalability by reducing the costs associated with submitting cryptographic proofs to Ethereum’s base layer.
The event, which drew in over 500 attendees and preceded a weekend-long hackathon, was greatly enhanced by Buterin’s presence as a key speaker towards the end of the day’s program.
With the smooth launch of Dencun on the mainnet, there was a strong desire to hear what the future holds for Ethereum from one of its most influential founding members.
Blobs have arrived
Buterin reflected on his highly-referenced roadmap for Ethereum after its successful transition to proof-of-stake consensus following The Merge in 2022.
The co-founder noted that many of the milestones he had outlined were primarily engineering tasks, some of which were achieved when Dencun was finalized.
Dencun included Ethereum improvement proposal (EIP-4844), which revolutionizes how Ethereum rollups store data on the mainnet. Multiple layer-2 rollups aggregate and process transactions off-chain, then submit a summary proof of these transactions to the Ethereum blockchain.
EIP-4844 introduced a new method for rollups to add more affordable data to blocks by introducing blob space as a replacement for using call data for storage.
Using call data to store cryptographic proofs of off-chain bundled transactions has historically been costly, as all Ethereum nodes must process the data that remains on-chain indefinitely.
Proto-danksharding, named after the researchers who proposed EIP-4844, allows rollups to send and attach data blobs to blocks. The data is not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is automatically deleted after 18 days.
The Evolution of Ethereum: Moving Towards Web 3.0
In the past decade, Ethereum has undergone constant change and its impact on the internet and traditional financial systems needs to be reevaluated, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He believes that the ecosystem must shift its approach in order to truly make a difference.
Buterin reflects on the first decade of Ethereum as a period of internal focus, where the ecosystem was primarily developing for itself. However, with the recent Dencun hard fork, the focus has shifted away from just the base layer and towards other layers of the network.
While Buterin acknowledges that changes to the base layer will still occur, he encourages a more application developer-centric mindset moving forward. The ecosystem has already produced numerous tools, such as zero-knowledge proofs, to build decentralized applications (DApps).
Buterin urges developers to adopt an “Ethereum 2.0” approach, utilizing modern tools and protocols like L2 rollups for improved privacy, security, and performance benefits. This shift towards Web 3.0 will allow for a more seamless integration of cryptocurrency into everyday life.
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