Original title:The cryptographic world computer; Original author: Vitalik
Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator: Asher (@Asher_ 0210)
We often call Ethereum a "blockchain," and this name easily makes people think that it is essentially the same technology as the Bitcoin created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. In many ways this is true; even the future "Lean Ethereum" built according to the Strawmap roadmap will still retain some basic characteristics of a blockchain.
But over the past fifteen years, this technology has changed greatly, and it will continue to develop over the next three years.What Ethereum is moving toward may be a system fundamentally different from the early blockchain.
Today's Ethereum supports general-purpose computation and uses proof of stake. There are already applications on-chain using zero-knowledge proofs, and L2s are also providing scaling and privacy protection. The Ethereum of the future will be able to choose, according to application needs, between extremely large-scale computation and fully general-purpose computational capability; blocks can be jointly built by multiple parties in various ways; proof of stake will be further optimized; and zero-knowledge proofs will also play a key role at the base layer.
Looking at the Bitcoin whitepaper, what has Ethereum changed?
Looking back at the original Bitcoin whitepaper and then comparing it section by section with Ethereum in 2015, 2025, and the envisioned 2030, almost every part has undergone major changes.
Take transaction authorization as an example. The early blockchain mainly relied on signatures, while in the future it may also use quantum-resistant signatures or zero-knowledge proofs. Verifying blocks no longer necessarily requires downloading all data and re-executing all computation; instead, data availability can be checked through PeerDAS, and then the SNARK can be verified. The process by which transactions enter blocks, the way computation and storage are handled, and what light clients can verify on their own are all very different from the early blockchain.
Almost all the core attributes that define a "blockchain" have already changed, or are about to change:
- Verification method: from downloading blocks and re-executing, to sampling through PeerDAS and verifying SNARKs;
- Consensus mechanism: from PoW to PoS, and then to a more highly optimized PoS;
- Block building rights: from a single miner building blocks, to multiple parties participating in building.
Therefore, after completing the Lean upgrade, Ethereum is still called a "blockchain," largely just continuing a historical name. It both retains the core ideas proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto and also uses cryptographic tools developed through the past fifty years of academic research. These tools did not exist in 2009, or were not yet mature.
Cryptography is not the only important discipline. Formal verification, database theory, peer-to-peer networking, information theory, and economics also play a role. However, progress in these fields has not changed the basic process of the early blockchain. Everyone tries to generate the next block that conforms to the PoW rules; after someone succeeds, they broadcast the block, others download and re-execute it, and so on. The development of cryptography, however, is changing this process itself.
What do users get, and what do developers need to change?
These technological changes will also change the trade-offs users face when using the Ethereum network.
The Ethereum network in 2015 could continue running, resist transaction censorship, ensure that transactions are executed according to pre-written rules, and make transactions irreversible. But these guarantees came with very high costs. The network's privacy capability was limited, and confirming transactions took time. If users wanted to verify on their own, they had to run a fairly powerful node; otherwise they could only trust others.
The envisioned Ethereum network in 2030 will retain these guarantees and further ensure that transactions enter blocks in real time through FOCIL. In some scenarios, the privacy protection it provides may be stronger than that of servers. However, general-purpose computation is still expensive and it is also difficult to fully protect privacy. Many specialized computations can be much cheaper, and many specialized applications can also provide stronger privacy protection.
Transaction confirmation still takes time. In 2015, the Ethereum network produced a block about every 17 seconds, and waiting for 12 confirmations took about 200 seconds.By 2030, a single slot may be shortened to about 4-8 seconds, and reaching finality may take about 8-32 seconds.Users still need to run their own nodes to obtain the fullest verification guarantees, but the requirements for running a node will be much lower.
At the same time, the way developers organize computation will directly affect application costs. In the early blockchain, the same amount of data and computation usually meant similar overhead. The future is different: if all operations are crammed into a single transaction that can only be executed serially, the cost will be high; if the dependencies among steps are clarified so that they can be processed in parallel, or aggregated before entering the final block, the cost can be reduced.
This will gradually change the design of Ethereum applications. In the long run, perhaps only information involving state changes and their execution order, which must be handled by the blockchain, needs to go on-chain. Other content can be aggregated in advance, allowing the blockchain to focus more on its own work.
Decentralization may also become a performance advantage
Perhaps the most important change is that the decentralization of the network is no longer merely a cost borne for security and robustness. In a few cases, it may also become a performance advantage. A decentralized network can store more data in parallel and can also complete large amounts of computation in parallel, much of which can be done in the mempool. In some cases, it can also enhance privacy, because only a decentralized network can effectively hide information such as where data and requests come from.
This was once a vision of Ethereum in the mid-2010s.Decentralization should not only be used to improve the robustness of the system, but should also help the system scale.Since a centralized system can improve performance by dividing work among different participants, a decentralized system should also be able to do so.
The key condition missing at the time was verification. After dividing the work, it must be confirmed that each part was completed correctly. Early designs tried to use randomly selected committees, but establishing committees was complex and costly, and would greatly increase latency; if the committee failed in its duties, there was also no remedy. Today, modern cryptography has solved this problem, and the additional overhead brought by related schemes is also decreasing month by month.
Latency is another direction worth attention. Ethereum itself can never match the latency of a server, but the infrastructure built around it perhaps can. Overall, if a stronger decentralized layer can be established between users and the chain, and this layer itself is not the chain, Ethereum may be able to gain stronger capabilities without harming the basic properties of the chain.
From blockchain to "cryptographic world computer"
Further in the future, Ethereum may also usher in another change, namely the rise of indistinguishability obfuscation (iO). Ideally, usable obfuscation technology can eliminate the trade-off between privacy and generality, allowing an unlimited number of participants to participate in general-purpose computation in a secure, encrypted way. Even weaker forms of obfuscation technology can be used in scenarios such as encrypted mempools. However, the changes discussed earlier in this article do not need to wait for this technology to mature before they occur.
This is the "cryptographic world computer."Ethereum will no longer be just a ledger where people put data and computation to be executed, but will become an architecture combining blockchain, cryptographic privacy and verification technologies, and powerful decentralized off-chain components.
To fully build such a system, there are still many challenges. Making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and secure enough is not easy, but the scope of this problem is relatively clear, and it is currently being continuously optimized with the help of AI tools. The more difficult, system-wide problem may be how to manage massive state and allow different participants to access this state in parallel. Related solutions have already appeared, but they still need to be continuously improved as the needs of future applications gradually become clearer.
From the Strawmap roadmap, the Hegota fork planned for next year may be Ethereum's last "regular" fork. The features and technologies it adopts would still be roughly recognizable to people in 2015. The work after that will involve recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making all of this quantum-resistant.
PeerDAS has already begun Ethereum's transformation from a mere blockchain into a more powerful system. After Hegota, this transformation will become the main line of Ethereum's development. Ultimately, Ethereum is expected to provide high-security computation that is lower cost, larger scale, and more private than in the past.
