Key takeaways:
- Vitalik Buterin believes that the Hegotá update may be the last “ordinary” Ethereum hard fork, whose architecture will resemble the one known from 2015.
- The next stage of development is to transform the network into a “cryptographic world computer”.
- Ethereum is expected to increasingly verify calculations performed off the main chain, rather than doing all the work itself. They will help with this, among others: recursive STARKs, formal verification, new consensus mechanisms and cryptography resistant to quantum computers.
Vitalik Buterin believes that Ethereum is entering a stage of fundamental change. The Hegotá update scheduled for 2027 may be the last “ordinary” hard fork, the architecture of which will be easily recognizable to people who remember Ethereum from 2015. Later, the network will increasingly resemble a “cryptographic world computer”.
Ethereum is ending an era
According to Buterin, PeerDAS was a breakthrough. The technology allows you to verify data availability by downloading only samples instead of having the node download the entire data set. This means that network participants do not have to do all the work associated with each element of the blockchain.
The idea is relatively simple, although the technology behind it is very advanced. Currently, blockchain is primarily associated with a network in which nodes download data, perform transactions and check their correctness. The future Ethereum is expected to work differently. Much more of the computation can be performed off-chain. Ethereum, on the other hand, will receive cryptographic proof that specific calculations have been performed correctly. The following may be used for verification: recursive STARKs, automatic formal verification and new consensus mechanisms. Buterin also points to the development of cryptography resistant to quantum computers.
In practice, this means division of labor. Ethereum doesn’t have to perform every complex task itself. They can check the evidence that the task was completed according to the rules.
This may not be visible to the end user. However, it means a huge change for the network architecture itself.
What does this mean for DeFi?
This approach could be particularly transformative for decentralized finance. Some of the calculations related to, for example, the analysis of loan security, the selection of a liquidation route or the matching of lenders and borrowers could be performed outside the blockchain.
Ethereum would then receive the result along with cryptographic proof of its correctness. The network would not have to do all the work, but only verify the result and settle the transaction.
This potentially allows you to scale up your application without proportionally increasing the demands on each node.
