The annual Ethereum community Conference (ETHCC) took place on 21 July in Paris. Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed the audience at this conference and spoke about the long-term potential of the network.
The developer-focused conference saw Buterin talk about the upcoming “Merge,” which will see Ethereum transition from proof of work (PoW) at proof of stake (PoS).
Moreover, while describing the long- and short-term effects of the Merge, Buterin stated,
“After the merge, you will be able to design an Ethereum client that does not even know the proof-of-work phase has happened.”
He also went on to state that,
“At the end of this roadmap, Ethereum will be a much more scalable system. Upon completion, Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second.
According to him, post Merge, the protocol will be “55% complete” in terms of the overall evolution of the Ethereum network. Therefore, developers have a lot of work ahead of them.
Change is the only constant
Planned “deep changes” are underway to make Ethereum a more powerful and reliable network, according to Buterin. He informed the public that after the integration, Ethereum will go through additional upgrades which he calls “surge”, “verge”, “purge” and “splurge”.
The surge refers to the addition of Ethereum sharding, a scaling solution that, according to the Ethereum Foundation will make layer-2 blockchains even more affordable.
It will also reduce the cost of rollups or bulk transactions and make it easier for users to run nodes that protect the Ethereum network. Buterin added that the Ethereum network will process transactions faster after the wave ends.
The Verge will introduce “stateless clients” and “Verkle trees,” a kind of mathematical proof. Users won’t need to keep a lot of data on their computers to function as network validators because of these technological advancements.
Validators in a proof-of-stake network authenticate and verify transactions using locked or “staked” ETH.
To streamline storage and lessen network traffic, the Purge will help eliminate old data. Following the previous upgrades, there will be a Splurge that will consist of several smaller upgrades and fine-tuning to ensure seamless network operations.
Vitalik further claimed that it is difficult to achieve these decentralized goals due to the complexity of the network and the speed at which it evolves. But, he said, these network upgrades are long overdue by all parties.
Notably, the price of ETH increased by about 33% this week. The altcoin also crossed the $1,600 mark to trade at $1,628 at press time.
