Vitalik's Vision: A Simplified Breakdown of Ethereum's Future and The Verge

Vitalik continues to be fully locked-in as he’s just released part 4 of what should be a 6 part series (“The Purge” and “The Splurge” yet to come). Here’s the links to all his originals and our summaries so far:

• Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 1: The Merge

  • The Edge Summary for Part 1

• Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 2: The Surge

  • The Edge Summary for Part 2

• Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol, part 3: The Scourge

  • The Edge Summary for Part 3

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In Vitalik’s latest post, he explains how Ethereum aims to maintain decentralization by making it easier for anyone to run a fully verifying node. One of the key features of blockchains, especially Ethereum, is that users can run nodes to verify the validity of the chain. Even if a majority of stakers or miners agree to change the rules, users running their own fully verifying nodes would reject the new chain and continue on the original one. This helps protect Ethereum from centralization and censorship, but for this system to work, running a node must be accessible to a wide range of users.

Today, running a node on Ethereum requires significant storage and processing power, with hundreds of gigabytes of data that need to be downloaded and verified. While it’s possible to run a node on a consumer laptop, it's not an easy task. The “Verge,” an upgrade in Ethereum’s roadmap, is about making node verification so efficient that it could be done on devices like mobile phones, browsers, and even smartwatches.

The original focus of the Verge was on implementing "Verkle trees," a type of cryptographic structure that reduces the amount of data nodes need to store to verify transactions. This approach allows nodes to verify blocks without holding the entire state of the blockchain (balances, smart contracts, etc.), using smaller proofs to verify correctness. But now, the Verge is evolving into a broader effort to improve Ethereum’s scalability through stateless clients and the use of SNARKs (succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge), which are cryptographic proofs that allow for efficient validation.

There’s also a growing conversation about whether Verkle trees are the best long-term solution, given their vulnerability to quantum computing. Alternatives like STARKs (another type of proof system) are being explored for their efficiency and future-proofing, though they currently require more computation.

The Verge aims to make Ethereum’s blockchain lighter and easier to verify, ensuring that even as the chain grows, users and stakers can continue to participate in keeping the network decentralized. Key goals include enabling stateless clients (where nodes don’t need massive amounts of storage) and developing solutions that make verification quick and efficient, even on small devices.

In the future, Ethereum could shift to a model where users verify the chain by downloading small amounts of data and running quick cryptographic proofs, drastically lowering the barrier to entry for running a node. This would help Ethereum maintain its core principle of decentralization, even as the network scales to meet the needs of millions of users.

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