As the Cancun upgrade approaches, which EIP protocols in Ethereum are worth paying attention to?

24-01-02 17:00

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Original author: Blockwords

Translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow

As the Ethereum network moves towards the Dencun hard fork in the first quarter of 2024, the community eagerly awaits a series of important improvement proposals (EIPs). These proposals not only concern the future direction of Ethereum, but may also have far-reaching implications for the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. In this article, we will explore the details and potential impacts of these proposals, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding.

The latest Ethereum All Core Developers Meeting has finalized a tentative schedule for the next mainnet hard fork, Dencun upgrade. It should be noted that Ethereum developers plan to fork the public testnet on the following date, only if there are no major issues:

·Goerli: January 17th

·Sepolia: January 30th

·Holesky: February 7th

This will be the last time Goerli joins the testing plan, as the network is expected to be deprecated.

They also discussed the upcoming upgrade - the yet-to-be-named Prague/Electra upgrade. The Ethereum community is considering whether to focus on a major core feature improvement (which may take a year of work) or to upgrade around multiple smaller improvements (which may be achieved by the end of 2024).

Regarding the aforementioned issue, a decision will be made after the new year. However, currently, the following are some improvements worth noting after the 2024 Dencun upgrade:

EIP-4844 (Original Danksharding)

EIP-4844 is a major project in the Dencun EIP industry and is the focus of many news reports in 2023.

StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson pointed out that this upgrade will reduce the data availability cost of all L2s. So this is something that Starknet is very much looking forward to, as it will allow users to reduce costs.

Web3 wallet developer Suku's Chief Technology Officer Lucas Henning said that this is a "year of breakthrough improvements for Ethereum". EIP-4844 is a revolutionary technology that will reduce Rollup Gas fees by up to 100 times.

Account Abstraction on the Rise

Henning's another focus is on improving account abstraction using ERC-4337 and its extension ERC-6900.

ERC is a subset of EIP that focuses specifically on token standards within the Ethereum ecosystem. They define rules for token implementation to ensure interoperability. Unlike some EIPs that modify the core protocol, ERCs typically do not require a hard fork.

ERC-4337 was launched in March. Henning believes that the concept of account abstraction will play a key role in the most important user changes.

He said that account abstraction will completely change our perception and interaction with wallets, making gas transactions the norm and secure social login the new normal, fundamentally reshaping the Ethereum user experience.

Traditionally, Ethereum has two types of accounts: externally owned accounts (EOAs) controlled by private keys and contract accounts controlled by code. The account abstraction blurs this distinction, allowing users to create accounts that resemble smart contracts.

It can improve user experience and security, and allow for more complex account logic, such as multi-signature wallets or social recovery of lost keys.

ERC-6900 introduces the concept of "delegated transactions". This standard does not require any changes to the Ethereum mainnet consensus, it allows users to delegate the ability to send transactions on their behalf to others, for example, to approve a batch of operations in one go in order to save time and hassle.

EIP-1153 (Instant Storage Opcode)

This proposal is part of Dencun and aims to introduce new mechanisms for handling temporary or instantaneous storage during the execution of smart contracts.

The traditional storage operations on Ethereum are permanent and consume Gas. This can be inefficient for temporary data that does not need to persist in a transaction.

EIP-1153 is an opcode that allows smart contracts to use ephemeral storage - storage that will be cleared at the end of transaction execution.

Uniswap team lobbied for proposal 1153 and hoped it was already in Shapella, but they were unable to garner enough support and consensus among core developers. This upgrade is expected to play an important role in enhancing the capabilities and efficiency of the upcoming Uniswap v4 protocol.

Click here to read: What has Uniswap Labs prepared for v4?

By enabling temporary storage, EIP-1153 can reduce the gas cost of storing data during contract execution, and provide developers with more flexibility in designing smart contracts.

By reducing the burden on permanent storage and minimizing state bloat, EIP-1153 can help with the scalability of the entire Ethereum network.