Ethereum’s Buterin Explains “The Surge”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has taken to social media to share his thoughts about "The Surge," the blockchain's new era that is expected to bring a higher level of scalability. 

The key goals outlined by Buterin include reaching 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) with L2, preserving the decentralization of L1, making sure that L2s still have Ethereum's "core properties," and maximizing interoperability. 

"The Surge" era started with the Dencun upgrade, which took place in March. This was Ethereum's biggest upgrade since its transition to proof-of-stake ("The Merge"). It has made the network substantially more efficient by reducing fees with the introduction of EIP-4844 data blobs. 

Buterin previously stated that the blob space could be significantly expanded to up to 16 MB per slot.

In his most recent post, Buterin states that achieving the aforementioned blob capability would not be enough to take over consumer payments and other high-bandwidth sectors. 

He sees Validium, a scaling transaction that does not store data on the Ethereum mainnet, as a possible solution for high-volume low-value applications. However, the problem is that Validium users can potentially freeze their funds if on-chain state data is withheld from users. 

According to Buterin, "the main remaining task" is to bring Plasma systems to production. The off-chain scaling solution would allow Ethereum to process more data. 

The Ethereum co-founder says it is "valuable" to continue scaling L1 itself. If L1 fails to scale, the "economic situation of ETH the asset" might become more risky, according to Buterin. One of the possible solutions is increasing the gas limit.