Analysis of Ethereum's Technological Development and Future Opportunities

Looking back at history, the cutting-edge technology discussions within the Ethereum developer community often evolve into daily application products, such as DEX, lending, rollup, and DA, etc. This trend not only reflects technological progress but also contains opportunities for investment layout.

At the beginning of 2025, we can gain valuable insights from the Ethereum roadmap, recent DevCon conference, and upcoming Pectra upgrade discussions. This article will organize and explore these aspects.

Ethereum Roadmap Analysis

The development roadmap of Ethereum has always been an important reference for observing future directions. It includes several phases: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. Each phase has its specific goals and improvement plans:

1. The Merge: Completed the transition from PoW to PoS, and includes some improvements in consensus protocols.
2. The Surge: Focused on enhancing scalability and providing better support for rollups.
3. The Scourge: Dedicated to addressing MEV-related issues, such as builder centralization and uneven distribution of MEV value.
4. The Verge: Plans to change the underlying data structure from Merkle tree to Verkle tree and promote the Snarkification of the EVM.
5. The Purge: Reduce node storage and maintenance pressure through data cleaning and archiving.
6. The Splurge: Involves more cutting-edge improvements, including EVM optimizations, account abstraction, and new cryptographic applications.

The improvements at these stages each have their own focus, some have already been implemented while others are still in planning. Together, they constitute the blueprint for the future development of Ethereum.

Highlights of the DevCon Conference

The recently held Ethereum DevCon conference discussed the current challenges and possible solutions. Among them, Beam Chain became a prominent topic, although jokingly referred to as "Ethereum 3.0", it is actually a collection of a series of underlying improvements, including Snarkification, block generation optimization, and staking enhancements. However, this plan is expected to take about 5 years to complete.

Rollup-related topics remain a hot topic at DevCon. The main discussions focus on addressing the liquidity fragmentation and interaction difficulties between rollups. Additionally, the technical maturity of L2 projects is also a point of concern, with only a few projects reaching a higher stage of development.

The conference also covered cutting-edge topics such as chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, and cryptographic applications, pointing the way for future development.

Pectra Upgrade Outlook

The Pectra upgrade expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025 will bring several significant improvements:

1. EIP-7702 (AA): Provides all EOA accounts with the ability to temporarily convert to smart contract accounts, which is expected to improve user experience.

2. EIP-7691: Plans to increase the number of blobs per block, further reducing rollup costs and enhancing Ethereum's DA competitiveness.

3. EIP-7251: Proposes to increase the staking limit from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether, simplifying operations for large stakers.

These upgrades will have a profound impact on the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in terms of user experience, scalability, and staking mechanisms.

Future Opportunity Analysis

Based on the above technological developments and discussions, we can foresee the following major opportunity areas:

1. Rollup interoperability: Solving liquidity and interaction issues between L2 remains a key focus. Solutions such as based rollup, shared sequencers, and cross-chain intents are currently in competition.

2. Account Abstraction: The implementation of EIP-7702 will bring new development opportunities for AA projects, especially in conjunction with features such as chain abstraction and intents.

3. Cryptographic applications: The maturity of zkEVM and zkVM frameworks, along with the combination of ZKP with MPC and FHE, will open up more application possibilities. In addition, verification applications such as ZK Email and zkTLS may see broader adoption.

The development in these areas will not only drive technological advancements in the Ethereum ecosystem but may also bring new opportunities for investors and developers. As the Pectra upgrade approaches, the market's response to these new technologies and applications will soon be evident.