Analysis of Ethereum Technology Development Trends and Future Opportunities

Looking back at history, the cutting-edge technology discussions within the Ethereum developer community often evolve into everyday application products, such as DEX, lending, rollup, and DA, etc. This trend also implies opportunities for investment positioning. In early 2025, by analyzing the Ethereum roadmap, recent DevCon, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade and other technical discussions, we can capture some valuable insights.

Ethereum Roadmap Analysis

The Ethereum roadmap has always been an important reference for observing future development directions, including stages such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. The main content of each stage is as follows:

• The Merge: The completion of the merger between the execution layer and the consensus layer, achieving the transition from PoW to PoS.
• The Surge: Focus on future scalability, improving the underlying layer to better serve rollups.
• The Scourge: Reduce MEV-related issues, such as builder centralization and MEV value being captured by large LSTs.
• The Verge: Including the transition from Merkle trees to Verkle trees and the Snarkification of the EVM.
• The Purge: Reduce the pressure on node data storage and state maintenance by deleting or archiving historical data.
• The Splurge: Cutting-edge improvements involving EVM layer, account abstraction, and other cryptographic applications.

DevCon Hot Topics

Recently, the DevCon conference discussed current issues and potential solutions. Among them, Beam Chain has attracted widespread attention and has been dubbed "Ethereum 3.0." Beam Chain has proposed several underlying improvements, including underlying Snarkification, block generation, and staking optimization, but it is expected to take about 5 years to complete.

Topics related to Rollups remain popular, especially issues of liquidity fragmentation and interaction difficulties between rollups. In addition, the maturity of L2 technology, chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptographic applications, and future upgrades are also focal points of discussion.

Pectra Upgrade Analysis

The Pectra upgrade, expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, includes multiple transformations from the underlying layer to the user end:

1. EIP-7702 (AA): Grants all EOA accounts the ability to temporarily convert to smart contract accounts, improving user experience but potentially increasing security risks.

2. EIP-7691: Increase the number of blobs per block, reduce rollup costs, and enhance Ethereum's DA competitiveness.

3. EIP-7251: Increase the staking limit from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether, optimizing the management of validator numbers.

Future Opportunity Analysis

1. Interoperability between Rollups:
   • Based rollup: Achieve ordering functionality through L1 to ensure atomicity of interactions between L2.
   • Shared sequencer: L2 Shared Sequencer Group, achieving interaction.
   • Cross-chain intents: Utilizing intents to meet cross-rollup needs.

Various solutions such as Based Stack, Astria, Espresso, Polygon AggLayer, etc. are being promoted, and it is expected that the market will produce winners by 2025.

2. Account Abstraction: The implementation of EIP-7702 will bring new opportunities for the AA project. By combining chain abstraction and intents, it may enable the construction of more complex cross-chain or multi-chain interaction capabilities. After the Pectra upgrade, early participants of EIP-7702 such as Zerodev may gain growth opportunities.

3. Cryptographic Applications:

   • Technical aspects: The zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are gradually maturing, and the combination application potential of ZKP with MPC, FHE, and other technologies is enormous.
   • Application aspect: ZK Email, zkTLS and other verification applications may gain more adoption.
   • Changes in the regulatory environment may reduce concerns about the compliance of privacy-oriented applications.

These technological changes and discussions bring new opportunities to the Ethereum ecosystem, warranting close attention and in-depth exploration by industry professionals.