Future Development of Ethereum: Expansion Strategies and Challenges

The vision of Ethereum has always been consistent: to create a global, censorship-resistant, permissionless blockchain network. It is a free and open platform for decentralized applications, built on the same principles as open-source projects like GNU+Linux, Mozilla, Tor, and Wikipedia.

In the past decade, Ethereum has not only innovated technologically but has also made breakthroughs on a social level. It showcases a more open and decentralized way of building, forming a unique ecosystem culture. As a political philosopher described, there are almost no gatekeepers here, the social status hierarchy has been disrupted, and those most respected are the technical experts focused on solving problems, rather than the power players climbing the hierarchy.

Technology and social processes are intertwined. Decentralized technological systems require decentralized social processes for maintenance, and vice versa. After years of effort, Ethereum has demonstrated significant practical value: millions of people use ETH or stablecoins as a means of saving and payment; it has practical privacy tools, a decentralized domain name system (ENS), social media alternatives, and DeFi tools that provide high yields for users.

However, Ethereum still faces scalability challenges. Currently, it mainly expands through the layer two network (L2), but L2 still has two major issues: scale and heterogeneity.

1. Scale: The existing blob space is difficult to meet the needs of L2 and future applications.

2. Heterogeneity: Interoperability and user experience issues between different L2.

To address these challenges, Ethereum needs to take the following measures:

• Accelerate the expansion of L1's blob capacity
• Moderately expand EVM and increase gas limit
• Enhance the security of L2
• Improve interoperability standards between L2s
• Accelerate L2 deposit and withdrawal speed
• Maintain the diversity of L2 while ensuring basic interoperability.
• Ensure that ETH continues to accumulate value in the L2 ecosystem.

Specifically:

1. Significantly increase the number of blobs per time slot, aiming to achieve 100,000 TPS per second.

2. Enhance the security of L2 by adopting a multi-proof system and formal verification, and exploring native Rollup and other solutions.

3. Promote L2 interoperability standards, including chain-specific addresses, cross-chain messaging, fast deposits and withdrawals, etc.

4. Adopt a multi-faceted strategy to strengthen the economic position of Ether, such as encouraging L2 support for Ether and considering blob fees.

The future of Ethereum depends on the collective efforts of the entire community. L2 developers need to contribute to blob scaling, EVM scaling, and interoperability standards. Wallet developers should implement relevant standards to provide users with a seamless experience. ETH holders and community members should also actively participate in discussions, contributing their wisdom to the development of the ecosystem.