Future Development Directions of the Ethereum Attestation System

Recently, the co-founder of Ethereum proposed a series of ideas regarding the future development of the Ethereum protocol, covering multiple aspects. This article will focus on the first part, namely "The Merge"(The Merge) phase, analyzing the potential improvement space of the attestation mechanism and its implementation pathways.

"The Merge" is the most important milestone event for Ethereum to date, marking the transition from proof of work to attestation. Although the current attestation system demonstrates excellent stability, performance, and decentralization, there are still several key areas that require further optimization.

Main Improvement Objectives

1. Achieve single-slot determinism, significantly reducing the time for block finality.
2. Accelerate transaction confirmation and completion speed while maintaining decentralization.
3. Lower the staking threshold and improve the feasibility of individual staking.
4. Enhance system robustness
5. Enhance resistance and recovery capabilities against 51% attacks

Single Slot Determinism and Staking Democratization

Currently, the finalization of Ethereum blocks takes about 15 minutes, and the minimum staking threshold is 32 ETH. This is the result of balancing multiple objectives. Ideally, Ethereum aims to achieve two goals while retaining economic finality:

1. Shorten the block finalization time to one slot (12 seconds or less)
2. Lower the minimum staking threshold to 1 ETH

These improvements will bring multiple benefits, including enhancing user experience, simplifying protocol architecture, and lowering the threshold for personal staking. However, these goals conflict with the need to minimize system overhead.

Single Slot Deterministic Scheme

To address performance issues in the case of a large number of validators, there are currently several potential solutions:

1. Optimize the signature aggregation protocol, possibly leveraging ZK-SNARKs technology.
2. The Orbit Committee mechanism is responsible for the final determinism of the chain by randomly selecting a medium-sized committee.
3. Dual-layer staking mechanism, setting two types of stakers with different staking requirements.

Each solution has its advantages and disadvantages, requiring a trade-off between security, decentralization, and technical feasibility.

Single Secret Leader Election

In the current system, the proposer of the next block is predictable, which poses a security risk. A single secret leader election protocol creates "blind" validator IDs for each validator through cryptographic techniques, and allows multiple proposers to reorganize and re-blind the blind ID pool to address this issue.

However, achieving a sufficiently simple and effective single secret leader election protocol still faces challenges, especially in maintaining the protocol's simplicity and quantum resistance.

Accelerate Transaction Confirmation

Further shortening the transaction confirmation time (for example, from 12 seconds to 4 seconds) will significantly improve user experience and enhance the efficiency of DeFi protocols. There are mainly two technical routes:

1. Shorten the time gap
2. Allow proposers to publish pre-confirmations during a single time slot.

However, both methods have their own limitations, such as potentially exacerbating validator centralization or failing to improve performance in the worst-case scenario.

Quantum Computing Threat Mitigation

In the face of potential quantum computing threats, Ethereum needs to develop alternatives based on hash or other quantum-resistant technologies for the current protocol parts that rely on elliptic curves. This highlights the importance of maintaining conservative assumptions in the attestation design.

Conclusion

The technical evolution of the Ethereum attestation system is fraught with challenges. From lowering the staking threshold to achieving single-slot determinism, from optimizing leader election to accelerating transaction confirmation, and addressing the threat of quantum computing, each aspect requires in-depth research and innovation. The Ethereum team is working hard to explore and weigh various technical solutions to find the best development path, achieving higher levels of security, performance, and decentralization.