Ethereum's Future Scaling Goals

Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has set a long-term goal of achieving over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) across Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks. In a recent blog post, he emphasized that the rollup-centric roadmap will remain the main strategy for scaling the Ethereum network but acknowledged the unique challenges it faces.

Buterin referred to the next stage of this roadmap as "The Surge." He outlined several objectives for enhancing Ethereum's scalability, including:

• Maintaining decentralization and security of the Layer 1 mainnet.
• Maximizing interoperability across Layer 2 solutions.

Higher Bandwidth Strategy

Despite the Dencun upgrade, which introduced blobs, Buterin noted that Ethereum still needs to improve its transaction speed. He proposed enhancing data availability sampling to verify data without requiring all nodes to download and store it.

The co-founder aims for a medium-term target of 16 MB of data availability bandwidth per slot, leading to an estimated 58,000 TPS, significantly higher than the current maximum of 375 kB per slot for rollups. However, he is cautious that this may not suffice for high-volume, low-value applications, suggesting the implementation of Plasma for these use cases.

Scaling the Mainnet

Buterin also discussed a potential solution for scaling the base layer using an effective gas limit increase strategy. He warned that a significant disparity in scalability between Layer 2 and Layer 1 could harm the economic viability of ether and destabilize the ecosystem.

He stressed that while increasing the gas limit is a straightforward approach, it risks centralizing Layer 1 and undermining its credibility as a robust base layer. Buterin proposed pricing strategies that could allow specific areas of Ethereum to be cheaper without compromising decentralization, such as different fees for various calculations or a more efficient bytecode format called EOF.

This blog post builds on his earlier work, which highlighted issues such as the lengthy 15-minute block finalization time and the 32 ether requirement for becoming a validator.