Ethereum's Roadmap: What's Next After The Merge

The Merge: A Brief Recap

In September 2022, Ethereum completed one of the most significant upgrades in blockchain history: The Merge. This milestone transitioned the network from the energy-intensive Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to the more environmentally friendly Proof of Stake (PoS), reducing Ethereum's energy consumption by approximately 99.95%.

The Merge represented the culmination of years of research and development, combining the original Ethereum execution layer with the Beacon Chain—a PoS chain that had been running in parallel since December 2020. While this achievement was monumental, it was just one step in Ethereum's ambitious development roadmap.

Now, with The Merge successfully completed and the dust settled, it's time to look ahead at what's next for Ethereum. The network's development continues with several key upgrades planned that aim to address scalability, security, and sustainability—the three primary challenges facing blockchain networks today.

Ethereum's Vision: The Road to Scalability

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder, has outlined a clear vision for the network's development through what he calls "The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge"—four phases that follow The Merge. More recently, the Ethereum Foundation has streamlined this into a more concrete roadmap focusing on several key technical upgrades.

Let's explore each of these upcoming developments and what they mean for Ethereum's future.

1. The Surge: Scaling Through Sharding and Layer 2 Solutions

Scaling remains Ethereum's most pressing challenge. Despite The Merge, the network's transaction throughput hasn't significantly increased, and gas fees can still spike during periods of high demand. The Surge phase aims to address these limitations through two primary approaches: sharding and Layer 2 rollups.

Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844)

The first step toward full sharding was implemented in March 2024 with the Dencun upgrade, which introduced Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844). This upgrade created a new transaction type called "blobs" that are specifically designed for rollups—Layer 2 scaling solutions that process transactions off the main Ethereum chain.

Proto-Danksharding provides temporary data storage that's cheaper than regular Ethereum calldata, significantly reducing costs for rollups. This has already led to a substantial decrease in transaction fees on Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync, making Ethereum more accessible for everyday users.

Full Sharding

The next major step will be implementing full sharding, which will split the Ethereum network into multiple partitions (shards) that can process transactions and store data in parallel. The current roadmap envisions 64 shard chains that will dramatically increase Ethereum's throughput.

Full sharding is expected to be implemented in stages, with data sharding coming before transaction sharding. This approach prioritizes providing more data availability for rollups before enabling direct transaction processing on shard chains.

The timeline for full sharding implementation remains flexible, with estimates ranging from late 2024 to 2026, depending on research progress and development priorities.

2. The Verge: Enhancing Stateless Clients and Verkle Trees

The Verge phase focuses on optimizing how Ethereum stores and accesses its state data—the record of all account balances, contract code, and other information that represents the current status of the blockchain.

Verkle Trees

A key component of The Verge is the implementation of Verkle Trees, a more efficient data structure that will replace Ethereum's current Merkle Patricia Trees. Verkle Trees allow for much smaller cryptographic proofs, enabling "stateless clients" that can validate transactions without storing the entire state of the blockchain.

This upgrade will make running Ethereum nodes more accessible, requiring less storage space and computational resources. It also supports the sharding architecture by allowing validators to verify transactions across multiple shards without maintaining the full state of each shard.

Stateless Clients

Building on Verkle Trees, stateless clients represent a significant advancement in how nodes participate in the network. Currently, nodes must download and store the entire Ethereum state to validate transactions fully. With stateless clients, nodes can verify transactions using compact proofs, dramatically reducing hardware requirements.

This development is crucial for maintaining Ethereum's decentralization as the network grows, ensuring that individuals can continue to participate without expensive hardware.

3. The Purge: State Expiry and History Expiration

The Ethereum state has grown substantially over time, making it increasingly resource-intensive to run a full node. The Purge phase addresses this challenge by implementing mechanisms to manage historical data more efficiently.

State Expiry

State expiry introduces a system where unused state data (accounts and contracts that haven't been accessed for a long time) is moved to a "cold" storage tier. This reduces the active state size that nodes need to maintain for normal operation, making the network more efficient.

Importantly, expired state isn't deleted—it's archived and can be reactivated when needed. This ensures no data is lost while still addressing the state growth problem.

History Expiration

Complementing state expiry, history expiration provides a framework for managing historical blockchain data. Currently, full nodes must store the entire history of the Ethereum blockchain—every transaction and state change since the genesis block.

History expiration will allow nodes to operate with only recent historical data, with older data maintained by specialized history providers. This further reduces the resources required to participate in the network.

4. The Splurge: Additional Network Improvements

The final phase in Ethereum's roadmap, The Splurge, encompasses various enhancements that don't fit neatly into the previous categories but are nonetheless important for the network's long-term health and functionality.

Account Abstraction

Account abstraction blurs the distinction between externally owned accounts (controlled by private keys) and contract accounts, enabling more flexible security models and user experiences. This upgrade allows for features like social recovery, multi-signature security, and sponsored transactions where applications can pay gas fees on behalf of users.

Significant progress has already been made on account abstraction through EIP-4337, which implements many of these features without requiring consensus layer changes. Further improvements are planned to make Ethereum accounts more powerful and user-friendly.

Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS)

Proposer-Builder Separation addresses concerns about MEV (Maximal Extractable Value)—the profit validators can extract by reordering, including, or censoring transactions. PBS separates the roles of block building and block proposing, creating a more competitive and fair market for transaction inclusion.

This upgrade aims to reduce the centralization pressures from MEV while ensuring transaction privacy and minimizing the potential for censorship.

Single-Slot Finality

Currently, Ethereum transactions require multiple slots (approximately 15 minutes) to reach finality—the point at which they can't be reversed. Single-slot finality would reduce this to just one slot (12 seconds), significantly improving the user experience and enabling more responsive applications.

This upgrade requires sophisticated consensus protocols and careful security analysis, making it a longer-term goal in the roadmap.

The Impact on Ethereum's Ecosystem

These roadmap developments will have far-reaching implications for the broader Ethereum ecosystem:

For Developers

The roadmap creates new opportunities and challenges for Ethereum developers:

• Rollup-Centric Development: With Ethereum embracing a rollup-centric scaling approach, developers are increasingly building applications directly on Layer 2 solutions while leveraging Ethereum's security.
• Modular Architecture: The emerging modular blockchain paradigm allows developers to choose specialized components for execution, settlement, data availability, and consensus, rather than building everything on a single chain.
• Enhanced Capabilities: Improvements like account abstraction enable new application designs with better user experiences and security models.

For Users

End users will benefit significantly from these upgrades:

• Lower Transaction Costs: Scaling solutions will dramatically reduce fees, making Ethereum accessible for everyday transactions and microtransactions.
• Improved User Experience: Account abstraction and faster finality will create more intuitive interfaces that hide blockchain complexity from users.
• Enhanced Security: Multi-layered security options and social recovery will reduce the risk of lost funds due to key management errors.

For the DeFi Ecosystem

Decentralized finance applications will evolve with Ethereum's roadmap:

• Cross-Rollup Protocols: DeFi applications will increasingly span multiple Layer 2 solutions, requiring new approaches to liquidity and interoperability.
• MEV Mitigation: PBS and related improvements will reduce the extractable value from transactions, creating fairer markets with less front-running and sandwich attacks.
• Institutional Adoption: Lower costs, faster finality, and improved security will make Ethereum DeFi more attractive to institutional participants.

Challenges and Considerations

While Ethereum's roadmap is ambitious and promising, several challenges and considerations remain:

Technical Complexity

The upgrades on Ethereum's roadmap involve complex cryptographic and distributed systems research. Some components, like full sharding and single-slot finality, require solving difficult theoretical problems before implementation.

Coordination and Governance

As Ethereum grows, coordinating upgrades across a diverse ecosystem becomes increasingly challenging. The governance process must balance the need for technical progress with community input and backwards compatibility.

Competition from Alternative L1s

While Ethereum works on its scaling roadmap, alternative Layer 1 blockchains are competing for market share with different approaches to scalability and security. Ethereum must deliver on its roadmap to maintain its dominant position in the smart contract platform space.

Regulatory Uncertainty

The evolving regulatory landscape for cryptocurrencies and decentralized systems could impact certain aspects of Ethereum's development, particularly around staking, DeFi applications, and privacy features.

Conclusion: Ethereum's Evolving Vision

Ethereum's post-Merge roadmap represents one of the most ambitious technological upgrading efforts in the blockchain space. By addressing fundamental challenges around scalability, security, and sustainability through a systematic, research-driven approach, Ethereum aims to become a global settlement layer for digital value and computation.

The multi-phase development plan balances immediate practical improvements like Proto-Danksharding with long-term architectural changes like full sharding and stateless clients. This approach allows the network to evolve gradually while maintaining stability and security.

For investors, developers, and users in the Ethereum ecosystem, understanding this roadmap provides valuable context for decision-making. While timelines may shift and specific technical implementations may evolve, the overall direction toward a more scalable, accessible, and sustainable network remains clear.

As Ethereum continues its evolution from The Merge through The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge, it's creating not just a more capable blockchain, but a foundation for a more open, efficient, and equitable digital economy.