Latest Research from Paradigm: What comes after Ethereum's Cancun hard fork?

On December 30, 2023, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared the Ethereum roadmap for 2024 on the X social network, providing a detailed overview of the upgrades and activities planned for the Ethereum network. According to a series of charts he presented, the key focal points for Ethereum in 2024 include six major components: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge.

In the first quarter of 2024, Ethereum is set to undergo the Dencun hard fork upgrade, and the Ethereum core developers have outlined the schedule for the Dencun hard fork upgrade. Assuming no major issues arise, the public test networks for Ethereum are tentatively scheduled as follows:

Sepolia: January 30

Holesky: February 7

This will mark Goerli's final inclusion in the testing lineup as the network is set to be deprecated. This move is part of the Dencun strategic activation on the Ethereum network in January 2024, signaling significant advancements in its technical

This article will analyze the Paradigm Reth team's understanding of the important Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) included in the Prague hard fork (the next execution layer hard fork after the Cancun upgrade) and their perspective on the “EL Core Dev” plan for 2024.

The Prague hard fork is anticipated to take place on the Ethereum testnet in the third quarter of 2024, with the mainnet implementation expected by the end of the year. The upgrade includes:

• The proposal to incorporate EIPs related to staking, such as EIP-7002, activating re-staking and staking pools without external trust requirements.

• Independent changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Additionally, Paradigm is willing to collaborate with teams interested in further researching the challenges presented in Prague and other EL hard forks. They are also open to providing guidance, including modifications to the Reth codebase.

Paradigm's Recognized Direction

• Paradigm believes that priority should be given to the following EIPs: 7002, 6110, 2537.

• Paradigm supports the Ethereum Object Format (EOF) as described in the specification but wishes to determine the scope promptly and create a meta-EIP dedicated to that scope.

• Paradigm is willing to include EIP-4844 Max Blob Gas, refraining from extensive comments on the correct numerical values but inviting collaboration with data researchers to study the EIP.

• Regarding the release of EIP-7547: Inclusion Lists version, Paradigm maintains an open-minded stance, recognizing that this EIP can help resist scrutiny at the base layer.

Directions Not Endorsed by Paradigm

• Paradigm does not support the Verkle Tries data structure adopted in the Prague hard fork but encourages client teams to work towards its implementation starting in the second quarter of 2024, with a commitment to releasing it in the mid/late 2025 upgrade in Osaka.

• Paradigm is against increasing L1 execution gas limits or contract sizes but is open to collaborating with data researchers to investigate the impact of such actions on the Ethereum network. Paradigm is also willing to adjust its stance, considering that past tests have shown Reth nodes can handle increased loads without issues.

• Paradigm believes that wallet/account abstraction EIPs need more adversarial testing to better understand the trade-offs in the network space. If wallet/account abstractions are not mutually exclusive, Paradigm is willing to deploy multiple EIPs related to account abstraction in the future.

• If the community agrees on the rumored NSA backdoor, Paradigm believes it could bypass the EIP-7212 (secp 256 r 1) circuit.

• Other roadmap themes: Paradigm has not practically explored the coupling of consensus layer EIPs or CL/EL (consensus layer/execution layer) forks. However, proposals like EIP-7549 and EIP-7251 seem promising. Paradigm also aims to contribute as much as possible from the EL perspective to the work on PeerDAS, currently hoping to avoid introducing SSZ roots (EIP-6404, 6465, 6466). Finally, Paradigm believes a long-term data archiving solution should be provided for expired blobs, history, and states, as EIP-4844 and EIP-4444 do not specify this. Whether Ethereum is willing to provide such a solution remains to be determined.