Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced a new development phase, “The Splurge,” aimed at making Ethereum faster, more secure, and ready for future challenges such as quantum computing.
This stage of the roadmap focuses on Ethereum's long-term flexibility and user accessibility, with the goal of “fixing everything else” to address notable scalability and security issues.
Buterin’s approach to preparing Ethereum for the advent of future quantum computers underscores his commitment to pre-empting any cryptographic weaknesses and ensuring the robustness of Ethereum’s cryptography.
Buterin's main focus in The Splurge is enhanced encryption that can protect networks from the code-breaking capabilities of future quantum computers.
Although such technology is not yet a reality, Buterin emphasizes the need to take proactive action to ensure blockchain security in the long term. Implementing new cryptographic techniques is a key element of Ethereum's resiliency plan, ensuring the network can withstand potential attacks in the future.
A notable improvement in The Splurge is account abstraction. This is a feature aimed at improving user experience by allowing trading fees to be paid with tokens other than ETH, Ethereum's native currency.
This flexibility eliminates the need to hold ETH simply for transaction fees, and is expected to improve interactions with decentralized applications (dApps), especially for novice users. The next “Pectra” version will also include EVM Object Format (EOF). This simplifies Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) operations and enables layer 2 scaling solutions.
These upgrades are in line with Buterin’s previous “Purge” initiative, which focused on streamlining Ethereum’s storage needs and data management. Together, “The Splurge” and “The Purge” plan to make Ethereum more scalable, cost-effective, and accessible, allowing it to handle increased usage while remaining secure and user-friendly.
Buterin's “multidimensional gas” model separates charges by resource type, such as storage and compute, making them more controllable and avoiding worst-case resource usage. This concept has the potential to make Ethereum cheaper, thereby increasing accessibility for users who rely on the network for dApps and other services.
Vitalik Buterin recently proposed “multidimensional gas” to address Ethereum’s high transaction fees, especially during times of network congestion. This approach aims to reduce costs by categorizing fees based on resources such as data storage and computing power, making Ethereum more affordable and efficient for users.
Also read: Vitalik Buterin shares 'The Verge': Ethereum's game changer?
