Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared the Ethereum roadmap for 2024, admitting that there are only minor changes compared to last year.
In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Buterin outlined that the continued focus for Ethereum in 2024 is on six main components.
Furthermore, in a detailed chart with annotations and diagrams, Buterin elaborated on these six elements — the Merge, the Surge, the Scourge, the Verge, the Purge and the Splurge.
He pointed out that, as Ethereum’s technical direction becomes clearer, there are only a handful of minor adjustments compared to 2023’s roadmap:
“As Ethereum’s technical path forward continues to solidify, there are relatively few changes.”
By popular demand, an updated roadmap diagram for 2023! pic.twitter.com/oxo58A2KuG
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 30, 2023
The Merge was highlighted as a key section on the roadmap, aiming to maintain a simple and resilient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.
In September 2022, the Merge took place, which integrated the Ethereum mainnet with the proof-of-stake blockchain the Beacon Chain.
Following the merge, the most significant observation on Ethereum was the transition from a power-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to PoS, leading to a major reduction in the network’s overall energy consumption.
He further noted the developments in Ethereum’s single-slot finality (SSF). Finality aims to ensure that changes to a blockchain block are irreversible without burning at least 33% of the total staked Ether (ETH):
“The role of single slot finality (SSF) in post-Merge PoS improvement is solidifying. It’s becoming clear that SSF is the easiest path to resolving a lot of the Ethereum PoS design’s current weaknesses.”
Related: Solana flips Ethereum in Google search interest: Data
This comes after Cointelegraph recently reported that Buterin wants to bring back the original idea of the “cypherpunk” revolution for the blockchain.
Cypherpunk refers to a person who uses encryption to ensure privacy when accessing a computer network, especially from government authorities.
In a blog post, Buterin explained that Ethereum was initially envisioned as a “public decentralized shared hard drive” that could leverage peer-to-peer messaging and decentralized file storage.
However, the vision started to diminish in 2017 with the turn toward financialization on Ethereum.
Buterin highlighted that rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, account abstraction and second-generation privacy solutions have become more mainstream. He noted that these could support certain values associated with cypherpunk principles.
Magazine: Ethereum restaking: Blockchain innovation or dangerous house of cards?