Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently unveiled a new technology roadmap covering a six-phase upgradation process for the popular open-source blockchain .
Open-source Ethereum blockchain is planning another technical upgradation, dubbed the Scourge, after two “Merge” updates, of which one of them was conducted recently.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently unveiled a new technology roadmap covering a six-phase upgradation process for the popular open-source blockchain .
In a Twitter message on November 5, Buterin announced to conduct Scourge upgrade, followed by the Verge, Purge, and Splurge technical improvements.
The process is expected to help enhance the network's "decentralisation and censorship resilience".
Earlier, the network had undergone two "Merge" upgrades. Ethereum entered the second technology improvement stage, Surge, after switching to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network on September 15.
The Scourge is the third stage in Ethereum's revised technological plan.
It will "guarantee reliable and credible neutral transaction inclusion and minimise centralization and other protocol issues from MEV (miner extractable value)," according to the roadmap.
Buterin called for a more "credibly neutral" consensus layer that "does not discriminate for or against any specific people."
MEV is generated when a miner outperforms other network users by selecting and including transactions in a block. It enables miners to replicate all successful transactions from the "mempool" and transact ahead of the arbitrageurs or other people looking to benefit.
After the Merge update, Ethereum saw a higher level of censorship and centralization. For example, the percentage of blocks in compliance with the US Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) on November 3 after the network switched to PoS reached 73 per cent, which is considered very high.
In a Tweet on October 15, Anthony Sassano, an advocate for Ethereum and creator of The Daily Gwei, said that censorship resistance is currently "more crucial than scaling".
Buterin also suggested a "Partial Block Auction" solution, where a block builder gets an opportunity to choose block contents, although Scourge's "full details" remain hidden from the public.
Ethereum research and development company Flashbots also suggested ideas to prevent censorship at the consensus layer, such as the "Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression (SUAVE)" solution.
ETH Merge
On September 15, 2022, Ethereum conducted the much-awaited “Merge” to move to a proof-of-stake network, considered a fast and more energy-efficient mechanism.
Ethereum implements a PoS method each time a new block is added every 12 seconds after the Merge. Then, an algorithmic lottery system will choose who will get to verify transactions (and gain tokens for doing so) from a pool of stakers who temporarily deposit their tokens for network safety.