Ethereum's The Verge Upgrade: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

Vitalik Buterin and his team are working hard on Ethereum's future. The current roadmap consists of six steps. We already covered three parts

Vitalik Buterin and his team are working hard on the future of Ethereum. The current roadmap consists of six steps. We already covered three parts, so it’s time for part four, The Verge.

This upgrade should make it easier to verify blocks. Buterin also publishes a log and technical articles on these six steps. We simplify his articles in our articles, which should make them easier to understand. As a result, today we take a closer look at The Verge.

What Is The Verge?

The Verge will make it easier to run a node from your laptop, mobile phone, or even your smartwatch. This asks for affordable computation. That’s exactly what Ethereum wants to bring to the table with this upgrade. See the picture below for the roadmap of The Verge.

Source: Vitalik Buterin’s article on The Verge

In the long term, you should be able to verify the full chain on your smartwatch. You only need to download some data and verify a SNARK. That’s a Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge. In other words, ZK tech. ZK tech allows you to prove a transaction, without showing its data.

Stateless Verification, Verkle Trees, or STARKs?

Currently, when you want to verify blocks, you need a lot of storage. Each consecutive year, you will need more storage. In other words, it’s hard to run your node and be an Ethereum validator. This has to do with state size. In crypto, ‘state’ refers to the current status of the chain’s digital ledger and its VM (virtual machine).

The goal is to replace the current Merkle Patricia state tree (MPT), because the current MPT is *very* unfriendly to stateless clients: a worst-case stateless proof for an Ethereum block is ~300 MB (think: spam reads on 24kB contracts), and even the average case sucks because the…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 28, 2024

Ethereum uses Merkle trees at the moment. They produce proofs for data points. However, they also need too much storage. Currently, there are two better options available,

Buterein and his team will soon decide which route they will go. See the picture below.

Validity Proofs of EVM Execution

Ethereum has a long-term goal for block validation. Ideally, you only need to download a small part of the whole block. This results in only needing a small proof to verify a block. This would need a SNARK or STARK solution. They would provide proof of the consensus layer and (ii) the execution layer. So, the PoS proof and the EVM proof.

Currently, validity proofs are not yet secure and take time. However, the goal is to have a prover time of sub 4 seconds. Today it takes around 15 seconds, with current technology available. Increasing prover time has security and decentralization trade-offs. That’s part of the issue that the team is trying to solve.

If we can find a way to automatically convert older-version EVM code into newer-version EVM code, that would of course significantly reduce the tradeoff.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 12, 2022

Validity Proofs of Consensus

Besides the EVM proof, there’s also the need to prove consensus when using a SNARK. However, there are many challenges in this process. It asks for a complete redesign of the beacon chain. This chain launched during the transition from PoW to PoS. You can also call it the heart of the Ethereum chain.

Buterin sees this as a multi-year plan before the devs can install it. For more technical information and updates, please visit Buterin’s article.

Conclusion

The Future of Ethereum is an ongoing project. It follows a six-step roadmap. We already covered three parts of this roadmap. The Merge, The Surge, and The Scourge. Today we covered step four, The Verge.

Disclaimer

The information discussed by Altcoin Buzz is not financial advice. This is for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. Any