Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced “The Verge,” an upgrade designed to make the Ethereum network more accessible by enabling nodes to run on everyday devices like smartphones and smartwatches. This marks a major leap toward greater participation in the blockchain ecosystem, especially for solo stakers and small investors.
Stateless Verification for Lighter Nodes
The core innovation in The Verge is stateless verification, which eliminates the need for nodes to store the entire blockchain, reducing hardware requirements. This means that even mobile and browser wallets can verify transactions, opening up Ethereum participation to a much broader audience.
Introduction of Verkle Trees
Hm, since the various options are within a small constant factor of your requirements, someone should actually benchmark them. This overview says “STARK over SHA256 or BLAKE > 10s”, but I would guess STARK over BLAKE3 to be a lot more efficient than STARK over SHA256. pic.twitter.com/gC9hMgEYvA
— zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ (@zooko) October 23, 2024
A crucial component of the upgrade is the implementation of Verkle trees, a cryptographic structure that reduces data proof sizes, making stateless verification possible. However, concerns about future quantum computing threats have led developers to explore alternatives like STARK-based binary hash trees for enhanced security.
Proposal to Lower Staking Threshold
Buterin has also proposed lowering Ethereum’s staking threshold from 32 ETH to 1 ETH, addressing criticism that the current requirement excludes smaller investors. This move aims to make staking more accessible, encouraging broader participation in the network.
Single-Slot Finality to Improve Efficiency
To counter the potential network inefficiency caused by an increase in validators, Buterin has suggested implementing single-slot finality, reducing block finalization time from 15 minutes to just 12 seconds. This mechanism would allow Ethereum to finalize transactions almost instantly while handling a larger number of validators.
