Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled “The Splurge,” a comprehensive set of protocol upgrades aimed at addressing a variety of challenges within the Ethereum ecosystem. In his latest work Blog post Titled “Potential Futures for the Ethereum Protocol, Part VI: Splurge,” Buterin delves into the technical complexities of upcoming improvements that seek to push Ethereum toward a more performant, secure, and scalable future.
“The Splurge” is designed to address a bunch of “little things” in the Ethereum protocol design that don’t quite fit into existing upgrade categories. According to Buterin, these elements are “hugely valuable to the success of Ethereum” but require dedicated focus due to their complexity and importance.
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The main goals of The Splurge include bringing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to a more performant and stable “endgame state,” integrating account abstraction directly into the protocol to enhance security and user convenience, and improving the economics of transaction fees to increase scalability while mitigating risk. And explore cutting-edge cryptographic techniques to significantly improve Ethereum in the long term.
Buterin emphasizes the need to improve EVM, noting that “today it is difficult to analyze EVM statically, which makes it difficult to build highly efficient applications, formally verify code, and perform further extensions over time.” The introduction of the EVM Object Format (EOF) is the first step in the EVM improvement roadmap, set to be included in the next hard fork. EOF offers features such as separating code and data, prohibiting dynamic jumps in favor of static jumps, removing the possibility of observing gas within EVM code, and adding an explicit subroutine mechanism.
EOF lays the foundation for further upgrades such as EVM modular arithmetic extensions (EVM-MAX) and integration of single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) capabilities. These improvements aim to make EVM more efficient for advanced cryptographic operations without relying too heavily on pre-compilation operations. “After you introduce EOF, it becomes easier to offer further upgrades,” Buterin points out.
Account stripping has been a long-standing goal of Ethereum, as it aims to allow smart contract code to control transaction verification. “At its core, account abstraction is simple: allowing transactions to be initiated through smart contracts, not just EOAs,” explains Buterin. This capability could enable a range of applications, from quantum-resistant encryption to seamless key rotation and improved wallet security.
ERC-4337 serves as an existing solution to implement account stripping without modifying the underlying protocol. It introduces a new object called “User Processes” and separates transaction processing into verification and execution phases. However, Buterin points out the shortcomings of this approach, particularly the “fixed gas overhead of up to 100k per package.”
EIP-7702 is proposed to provide the benefits of account abstraction to all users, including externally owned accounts (EOAs), by integrating it directly into the protocol. This move could unify the ecosystem and eliminate the need for relay devices in privacy protocols. “EIP-7702 makes the ‘convenience features’ of account abstraction available to all users, including EOAs, today,” Buterin writes.
While EIP-1559 has improved average block insertion times and fee predictability, Buterin admits there are drawbacks to its implementation. He notes that “the formula is a bit flawed” and “doesn’t adjust quickly enough in extreme conditions.” The proposed EIP-7706 aims to address these issues by introducing multi-dimensional gas fees, allowing separate pricing and limits for different resources such as communication data, read/write state, and state size expansion.
“Multi-dimensional gas has two fundamental trade-offs: it adds complexity to the protocol and to the optimal algorithm needed to fill the block to its capacity,” Buterin explains. However, he suggests that the benefits in efficiency and resource management can outweigh these complexities.
The introduction of Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) aims to improve the randomness in the Ethereum proposer selection process. “Ideally, we would find a more robust source of randomness,” Buterin says. VDFs can offer a solution by providing output that is computationally intensive to produce but is easy to verify, reducing the potential for tampering. There are still challenges, such as “unexpected optimization” through hardware acceleration or parallelization. “Currently, there is no VDF build that fully satisfies Ethereum researchers on all axes,” admits Buterin, noting that more research and development is needed.
Furthermore, Buterin explores the “far future of cryptography” by discussing advanced concepts such as indistinguishability obfuscation and one-shot signatures. He refers to these as part of the “Egyptian God Protocols,” extremely powerful cryptographic primitives that could revolutionize blockchain technology. Indistinguishability obfuscation allows the creation of “cryptographic programs” that perform arbitrary calculations while concealing internal details. “By bringing obfuscation and individual signatures together, we can build almost perfect, trustless third parties,” Buterin asserts.
Potential applications include decentralized autonomous organizations, secure auctions, trusted global settings, and simplified verification of zero-knowledge proofs. Despite their promise, these technologies are still in their infancy. “There is still a lot to do,” Buterin admits. Applications of indistinguishable obfuscation currently face significant performance hurdles, and practical quantum computers capable of enabling one-shot signatures remain theoretical.
By addressing EVM improvements, account abstraction, improving transaction fees, and exploring the frontiers of crypto, Buterin aims to keep Ethereum at the forefront of blockchain innovation. Although he acknowledges the complexities and trade-offs involved, he remains optimistic. “Very strong cryptography could completely change the game,” he concludes.
At press time, Ethereum was trading at $2,627.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
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