Understanding Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap : ethereum

It feels to me like there’s plenty of confusion round Ethereum’s roadmap, with a typical notion being “Ethereum 2.Zero is the following model of Ethereum that’ll exchange the present model”. This isn’t true. Certainly, Ethereum has pivoted to a rollup-centric roadmap, which I do not see almost sufficient individuals speaking about. So here is my try at including to that dialog with a short overview of the place issues are headed, and why it’s extremely a lot not like you could count on.

First, the rollup-centric was formalized in October 2020, and since then most of Ethereum’s main choices have pivoted round rollups. Learn extra right here: A rollup-centric ethereum roadmap – ethereum-roadmap – Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians (ethereum-magicians.org). Additionally, the concept originates from approach again in April 2019: Phase One and Done: eth2 as a data availability engine – Sharding – Ethereum Research (ethresear.ch)

I am not going to speak a lot about rollups right here (you possibly can see my profile for a lot of posts concerning the matter) however they’re basically a brand new class of blockchains that target doing one factor very nicely – very quick transactions at a low price – whereas “contracting out” the laborious stuff like safety and decentralization to a distinct blockchain (L1). Consequently, rollups can successfully provide excessive scalability with out sacrificing safety and decentralization – for the primary time within the business. I usually joke that “rollups are 4th gen blockchains” however that is truly true – this marks a paradigm shift to the blockchain business as we all know it.

Some Ethereum researchers foresaw the incoming rollup revolution as far back as April 2019, however it was formalized in October 2020 as the rollup-centric roadmap.

The earlier plan below the outdated “Ethereum 2.0” roadmap was: Ethereum would be the blockchain that does all of it, reaching scalability via shards. Finish customers will make transactions on the 64 shards.

The present plan below the most recent rollup-centric roadmap: Really, rollups will scale, and transactions by finish customers will occur on rollups, not Ethereum. As an alternative, Ethereum will give attention to being the most effective L1 chain for rollups. Proof-of-stake will make it probably the most safe and decentralized consensus layer for rollups, whereas the 64 shards will provide large knowledge availability for rollups.

Why make this pivot? It is fairly easy: rollups are merely higher than conventional blockchains. Ethereum’s focus is to retain excessive scalability and decentralization. With the outdated roadmap, we might obtain ~3,000 TPS with sharding. Rollups have been providing this sort of scalability since early 2020, and at this level are confirmed tech, whereas there are numerous unknowns on how nicely transactions on shards will work. By comparability, it is simpler well-known and simpler to shards for knowledge availability. With rollups + knowledge sharding we’ll get to 100,000 TPS. All of the whereas, this may be achieved a lot sooner with much less technical and safety dangers, by late 2022. It is fairly merely the pragmatic possibility.

The implication right here is that within the medium time period, the following couple of years, Ethereum is all in on rollups, and expects a majority of customers to transact immediately on rollups. A side-effect of that is that Ethereum L1 will proceed to stay constrained and as act as a settlement layer for rollups relatively than finish customers, however it would not actually matter as most customers might be on rollups. As such, older conventional blockchains like Cardano, EOS, Tron are not competing with Ethereum – they’re competing with sensible contract rollup chains like Arbitrum, zkSync 2.Zero and many others.

In the long run, we do count on L1 scalability via executable shards, statelessness + state expiry, ZK-Ethereum, however with the rollup revolution occurring proper now, this can be a low precedence. The highest precedence for the blockchain business as a complete must be to develop and mature the rollup ecosystem.

Tl;dr: Rollups mark a paradigm shift for the blockchain business, providing excessive TPS with out materially sacrificing decentralization and safety for the primary time ever. A overwhelming majority of finish person exercise might be on rollups. In response, Ethereum is not only a sensible contract platform, however centered on being the most effective settlement layer for sensible contract platforms (rollups).