The Possible Future of the Ethereum Protocol: Prosperity Edition

The goal of the prosperity phase is to push the Ethereum protocol towards a high-performance, stable, and secure ultimate state. This phase includes several key improvements:

EVM Improvement

The current EVM has some issues, such as difficulty in static analysis and low efficiency. The EVM object format (EOF) is a series of EIPs aimed at addressing these problems. EOF introduces features such as code and data separation and prohibiting dynamic jumps.

After EOF, it is also planned to introduce EVM module arithmetic extensions ( EVM-MAX ) and single instruction multiple data ( SIMD ) functionality. These improvements will greatly enhance the performance of the EVM, especially in supporting cryptographic operations.

Account Abstraction

The goal of account abstraction is to allow smart contracts to initiate transactions, not just limited to externally owned accounts (EOA). This will enable more flexible account security mechanisms, such as multi-signature wallets, social recovery, etc.

ERC-4337 is a standard for implementing account abstraction, preventing DOS attacks by separating the verification and execution phases. Currently, proposals are being explored to write account abstraction into the protocol, such as EIP-7701.

EIP-1559 Improvement

EIP-1559 has improved block inclusion times, but there is still room for improvement. Multi-dimensional Gas is an important direction, setting different prices and limits for different resources. This can enhance resource utilization efficiency and reduce costs.

Verifiable Delay Functions ( VDFs )

VDFs are designed to provide a more secure source of randomness. It is a function that can only be computed sequentially and cannot be parallelized for acceleration. VDFs can be used to improve scenarios such as proposer selection, but more research is needed to find suitable constructions.

Advanced Cryptography

Advanced cryptographic primitives such as indistinguishable obfuscation and quantum one-time signatures are expected to bring revolutionary improvements to Ethereum in the future. These technologies can achieve near-perfect trustless third parties, greatly enhancing privacy and security.

Although these technologies are not yet mature, they represent the direction of future development for Ethereum. As research deepens, these technologies are expected to bring more innovative applications to Ethereum.