Vitalik Explains Ethereum’s Next Steps After Dencun Upgrade

Blobs have officially come to Ethereum through its latest “Dencun” hard fork, making it far cheaper to transact on the network’s layer 2 (L2) blockchains. So what’s next?

In a blog post published on Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined how he expects Ethereum to scale for mass adoption, emphasizing a shift in developmental focus to L2s.

Vitalik’s View On Ethereum Layer 2s

According to Vitalik, the newly implemented EIP 4844 (aka “blobs”) marked a “zero to one” milestone for Ethereum scaling, after which all remaining scaling improvements will be “incremental” by comparison.

The upgrade creates dedicated data availability space – or “blobspace” – on Ethereum’s base layer where layer 2 networks can post batched transactions for a much lower cost than previously allowed. Networks poised to benefit from the upgrade include Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, among others

With blobs in effect, one of Ethereum’s next goals may be to implement “data availability sampling,” a more efficient method for verifying blobs that could help greatly increase the network’s blobspace. These could allow blobs to process roughly 1.33 megabytes of data per second.

“From here on, data availability sampling can be introduced and blob count can be increased behind the scenes, all without any involvement from users or applications,” wrote Vitalik.

The next scaling goals, he claimed, will be to increase blob capacity and improve on existing L2s, both of which carry minimal need for a hard fork.

To improve L2s, the developer recommends reducing transaction sizes using data compression, using L1s for security more sparingly, and scaling rollups internally. He also pushed for a true shift towards decentralization with L2s whose code can only be modified by security councils under rare circumstances.

Ethereum’s Next Ten Years

With blobs released and rising adoption of L2s underway, Vitalik stressed that developers must begin developing protocols that meet the standards of the current decade – not the last.

“We no longer have any excuse,” he wrote. “Today, we have all the tools we’ll need, and indeed most of the tools we’ll ever have, to build applications that are simultaneously cypherpunk and user-friendly. And so we should go out and do it.”

Vitalik is still a proponent of developing more advanced features on Ethereum’s base layer, enabling more simplicity and reducing bug risk on layer 2 networks.

In recent weeks, Vitalik has proposed multiple ways to help decentralize Ethereum staking away from large staking providers. These include creating new, more accessible tiers of staking through “rainbow staking,” and imposing harsher financial penalties on staking whales.