ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has added more to the section of ethereum's roadmap called “The Splurge,” with the goal of advancing the ethereum virtual machine (EVM) toward a stable and stable “end state.” high performance.
According to the technical report of October 29 eth.limo/general/2024/10/29/futures6.html”>blog postThis vision also included significant improvements to ethereum's user experience, security, transaction fee structure, and cryptographic capabilities.
Improving EVM with EOF
Buterin explained that the current EVM architecture presents challenges for static analysis, making it difficult to create efficient implementations, formal code verification, and future extensions. This architecture restricts support for advanced cryptographic methods.
To overcome this, Buterin introduces the EVM Object Format (EOF), a critical part of the upcoming ethereum hard fork. EOF is a set of ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) that restructures the EVM code to separate code from data, restrict dynamic jumps, and introduce new subroutine mechanisms.
These updates are expected to increase EVM's efficiency, scalability, and compatibility with complex cryptographic functions.
Legacy contracts will remain functional, but new contracts can take advantage of specific EOF features to improve performance and reduce gas costs. With EOF, the ethereum network can more easily incorporate updates over time.
Account abstraction
Buterin also revealed that “The Splurge” aims to advance account abstraction, expanding the transaction verification process beyond ECDSA signatures. This update would allow accounts to use arbitrary EVM code for verification logic instead of relying solely on single signature verifications.
According to Buterin, account abstraction allows transactions to originate from smart contracts rather than exclusively from externally owned accounts (EOA). The complexity lies in implementing this model to support decentralization and mitigate risks such as denial of service attacks.
Furthermore, he noted that “ideally, account abstraction implementations should be harmonized across L1 and L2 as much as possible.”
Transaction Fee Economics
Buterin also talked about ethereum's transaction fee structure, calling it “multidimensional gas.” This concept suggests having different prices and limits for different blockchain resources to better allocate network capacity.
As he explained:
“Today we have multidimensional gas for execution and blobs; In principle, we could increase this to more dimensions: call data, state reads/writes, and state size expansion.”
He believes multi-dimensional gas could reduce “worst-case” pressure on resources, reducing the need for constant performance optimization. However, he pointed out two main trade-offs: greater complexity of the protocol and greater complexity in the algorithms needed to optimize block capacity.
So, to simplify implementation, Buterin proposed that the use of multidimensional gas could be limited within EOF. Since the EOF prevents contracts from setting gas limits for other contract bids, this approach could avoid some of the challenges inherent in multi-dimensional gas.
