# Ethereum is an innovation at the level of human civilization

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Ethereum is an innovation at the level of human civilization, just like language and writing

But in the development process of Ethereum, it has also undergone several major changes. To understand Ethereum and participate in it, you need to know its history and evolution

I will sort out the evolution of Ethereum in this thread, as well as the latest roadmap

Given that Ethereum is a very complex economic system, I've only picked out the main components (so there may be some omissions)

## The Background

Ethereum was proposed by VitalikButerin in 2013, VitalikButerin directly borrowed the design of bitcoin, so decentralized and secure are the DNA of Ethereum from the beginning (this is why I like it)

But scaling of Ethereum has been very difficult because of "the scalability trilemma"

There were many blockchains that wanted to overtake Ethereum in different directions, but their choices brought them more problems


For example, choose a chain with high TPS (scalable + secure), they generally have very large blocks and high-performance nodes, which can process more transactions per second

But the cost is decentralization, because consumer laptops cannot run such high-performance nodes, so they only have dozens or hundreds of nodes (BSC, Solana)

Another option is decentralized + scalable, like IBC and other multi-chain universes, but this creates a big security risk

If an attacker chooses the weakest one in the multi-chain to attack, if it succeeds, it will cause a series of serious chain reactions

## Convert PoW to PoS

For Ethereum, we would rather sacrifice a certain degree of scalability than give up decentralization and security

So when Ethereum was first launched (2015), Vitalik Buterin began to [research](https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/12/28/understanding-serenity-part-2-casper) and plan to convert PoW to PoS

Compared with PoW, PoS has three advantages. The Ethereum network will be more secure and decentralized. For details, please refer to [this article](https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html)

Starting from the PoS consensus mechanism, VitalikButerin defines the earliest roadmap of Ethereum 👇


## Early Roadmap: Sharding-Centric

The earliest roadmap is: PoW to PoS (phase 0) → data sharding (phase 1) → execution sharding (phase 2)

Ethereum not only wants to have the best decentralization and security, but also hopes to solve the problem of execution efficiency through data/execution sharding



According to VitalikButerin's research, Ethereum can reach 1000-5000 TPS after phase 2 is implemented. Currently, Ethereum is only 5-15 TPS

The improvement of execution efficiency is mainly because execution sharding can execute transactions in parallel

And PoS as phase 0 is not only because of the first research, but also because the other shards need to use PoS as the base layer (Beacon Chain)

In this workflow, data sharding does not involve code execution, only involves data storage and verification (data availability). Execution sharding is used to execute code (similar to the execution layer of the current layer1)

After implementing phase 2, there will be many execution shards to process transactions in parallel, and finally aggregated to data sharding, and then aggregated to Beacon chain and Main Chain


At that time, there were many interesting studies on execution shards

For example, VitalikButerin proposed a standardized intermediate language (eWASM), allowing all programming languages to be compiled into this intermediate language of Ethereum, and finally compiled into EVM bytecode execution

In this way, Ethereum will no longer be "a voice of solidity", but a rich ecosystem that can be developed in all languages

Even each execution shard can be designed with different VMs. Eventually, sync state, and aggregate to the base layer (much like today's Rollup)


## Current Roadmap: Rollup-Centric

But because "merge (phase 0)" took too long, and the design of sharding changed many times, the most important thing was the emergence and rapid development of Rollup and other L2s (plasma channels), which led to another change in Ethereum roadmap

The emergence of Rollups cannot be ignored, and may be the main theme of the blockchain for a long time in the future

Ethereum has also [redesigned its own roadmap for Rollups](https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-rollup-centric-ethereum-roadmap/4698)

The emergence of Rollups cannot be ignored, and may be the main theme of the blockchain for a long time in the future

Ethereum has also redesigned its own roadmap for Rollups

The first step is to complete the "merge" to realize the merger of the consensus layer (beacon chain) and the execution layer (current Ethereum), after which Ethereum will completely transform from PoW to PoS


The second step is to deploy data shards based on the beacon chain (pos and sharding are developed in parallel, so merge will not affect the development progress of sharding)

However, the data shards here are not for Ethereum's own execution shards (abandoned), but to better serve Rollup and further reduce the data storage cost of Rollup

For details, please refer to [this article](https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/data_sharding_roadmap)

When the data shards are successfully deployed, a Rollup can send all the blocks data processed by itself to different shards for verification in parallel

Theoretically, the number of data shards deployed can reduce the cost of Rollup (also L1 throughput)


When DAS (Data Availability Sampling) is fully introduced, data sharding is fully deployed (a whole new world!)

What concept: The current TPS of Ethereum L1 is 5-15. If all users and applications are migrated to Rollup, we can achieve a TPS of 3000+

If the data sharding deployment is completed, we can theoretically achieve a TPS of 10w+ (blockchain will No longer toy for the niche crowd)


## Conclusions

What will Ethereum look like in the long run? This is a very open question and well worth researching

I want to see blockchain evolve a more advanced governance system than the physical world, and Ethereum (or any truly secure and decentralized blockchain) be the cornerstone of our digital lives and have a direct impact on our physical society

First of all, Ethereum will become a very good base layer, providing data storage and data verification for Rollup

whether users choose to concentrate on a certain Rollup (the largest Rollup needs to decentralize the sequencer), or scattered among different Rollups (different Rollups require communication protocols)

Also, Ethereum will use a lot of cryptographic features such as zk-snark and zk-stark, such as "[Enshrined Rollup](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/vrx9xe/comment/if7auu7/)"

When zkEVM can achieve "consensus-layer" compatibility, we can change the current single-instance EVM of the L1 to enshrined zkEVM rollup

layer1 can generate a proof for the state root of each block to verify the block All transactions are valid

We can even run multiple enshrined zkEVM rollups in parallel to enhance the transaction processing capability of Layer 1 (it’s just an idea at the moment)

These wouldn’t be a reality without a breakthrough in the underlying cryptography, so “zkp everything” will be soon

[Thread](https://twitter.com/LuozhuZhang/status/1546971464645357568?s=20&t=hf32T6kwnUQiTjAV1MfiLA)