Vitalik Buterin Updates Ethereum's Roadmap for 2024

In the morning post on December 31, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled the update plan for the world’s second-largest blockchain in 2024.

Compared to the late 2022 version, the Ethereum development roadmap maintains its six stages, including the pivotal event known as The Merge, incorporating the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.

However, Buterin highlighted significant improvements that need swift implementation:

The Merge: Utilizing Single-slot Finality to address issues with the Proof-of-Stake mechanism.
The Surge: Upgrading Dencun to deploy EIP-4844, aiming to process 100,000 transactions per second.
The Scourge: Resolving MEV issues and risks from the concentration of liquid staking.
The Verge: Simplifying the block verification process.
The Purge: Streamlining the Ethereum protocol.
The Splurge: Addressing other issues such as enhancing the EVM, implementing Account Abstraction on a large scale, and more.

By popular demand, an updated roadmap diagram for 2023! pic.twitter.com/oxo58A2KuG

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 30, 2023

In the article, Vitalik also expressed support for the single-slot finality (SSF) solution as the “easiest path to address many current weaknesses in the Ethereum Proof of Stake design.”

Furthermore, Vitalik argued that The Scourge needs adjustments to prevent concentration in two main “battlefields” of Ethereum: MEV and liquid staking. Currently, Lido Finance’s Ethereum staking service is causing significant concerns about concentration in the liquid staking space, as the amount of ETH staked in this project continues to hold a substantial share.

Despite some minor changes, the core priorities of the Ethereum ecosystem remain consistent with the previous year’s plan. While not providing an estimated implementation timeline, Vitalik assured that the changes are prioritized in full.

Vitalik Buterin has recently returned to social media, sharing his personal views on altering the Proof-of-Stake mechanism to prevent overload on the Ethereum network. He calls on the community to return to core values such as decentralization, censorship resistance, and open-source principles.