Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, recently published an article outlining the key steps and objectives for the Ethereum network’s development. Essentially, this article is a part of Ethereum’s roadmap. The goals detailed play a crucial role in the ecosystem's future, and their implementation will bring significant improvements in performance and compatibility across various solutions.

In this article, we are going to see what changes we can expect to see in the network going forward.

Key Objectives for the Network

Here are the main points Buterin outlined:

Achieving a performance of up to 100,000 transactions per second on main blockchain (layer-1 or L1) and secondary layers (L2).
Maintaining reliability and decentralization of L1.
Maximizing compatibility between L2 solutions.
Ensuring Ethereum is perceived as a unified space rather than a collection of independent blockchains.

In his article, Buterin discussed how the scalability trilemma can be bypassed using innovative approaches. He argued that the trilemma is not a theorem, but rather a heuristic concept that lacks mathematical proof.

He pointed out that combining technologies like data availability sampling and SNARKs allows for efficient data and computation verification without requiring every node to validate all data. This enables scalability, decentralization, and security—the three aspects of the trilemma.

SNARKs

SNARKs (Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) are proofs with specific features:

Succinct: The proofs are compact and can be quickly verified.
Non-interactive: They do not require repeated interactions between participants.
Argument of knowledge: They ensure the prover genuinely has access to the original data.

zk-SNARKs are a variant that adds the zero-knowledge feature:

Zero-knowledge: The proof reveals no additional information about the transaction or computations, aside from the fact that they are correct.

Buterin emphasized zk-SNARKs' importance in improving Ethereum’s data verification process. In the future, zk-SNARKs could significantly simplify scaling, especially for zk-rollups, though they require a complex cryptographic infrastructure.

Here are the Ethereum scaling directions:

ZK-Rollups use zk-SNARKs to validate transaction correctness. Instead of recording each transaction on the blockchain, ZK-Rollups create brief proofs confirming all transactions' validity, greatly reducing the blockchain's load and increasing throughput.
Plasma. This is a scalable solution that involves an operator posting blocks off-chain and publishing Merkle roots of these blocks on-chain (as opposed to rollups, where the full block is included on-chain). It could see new development with SNARKs. Early versions of Plasma were limited in what they could safely do, but integrating SNARKs makes Plasma architectures more viable for broader use cases. One method (though not the only one) to create an EVM-based Plasma chain is to use ZK-SNARKs.
PeerDAS is a technology designed for scaling Ethereum, particularly in data availability sampling (DAS). It addresses a major scalability issue: how to verify the availability of large data volumes without requiring each network node to fully store or validate them.

SNARKs help tackle scalability by allowing efficient data and transaction verification without overloading the network. Rather than requiring each node to fully verify all data, SNARKs produce concise proofs that are easily checked, maintaining both decentralization and security.

Thus, SNARKs play a key role in implementing scalable solutions like ZK-Rollups, Plasma, and PeerDAS, as they enable security, scalability, and efficiency—all essential for Ethereum’s future development.

The Main Challenges

In order to achieve the mentioned goals, the Ethereum team will have to solve a number of issues.

Technical complexity of implementing zk-SNARKs and ZK-rollups.
Balancing scalability, decentralization, and security.
The need for a gradual network migration to new technologies without disrupting the current ecosystem.

Conclusion

Vitalik Buterin emphasized that the right application of technology could help overcome the scalability trilemma. Technologies like zk-SNARKs, Plasma, and PeerDAS will be central to Ethereum’s future architecture. Implementing such solutions will be complex and time-intensive, requiring attention not only to technical aspects but also to the impact on the existing ecosystem.

If Buterin’s ideas are realized, Ethereum will become more accessible and efficient, increasing its appeal for developers and users. Ultimately, Buterin’s goal is to create an Ethereum that is fast, scalable, and user-friendly, while remaining decentralized and secure.

SimpleSwap reminds you that this article is provided for informational purposes only and does not provide investment advice. All purchases and cryptocurrency investments are your own responsibility.

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