Ethereum Merge is Just The Beginning – The Surge, Verge and Purge Upgrades Are On The Cards
Ethereum has successfully converted into Proof of Stake after the Merge. The next Ethereum upgrades are lined up as” the Surge, the Verge, the Purge and of course the most fun one the Splurge” according to Vitalik. These upgrades will make Ethereum more secure, scalable and by the end of the Splurge Ethereum upgrade, it will be able to process more than 10,000 transactions per second.
Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum co-founder, at the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris, revealed what will happen post-Merge. His final words were that” Etheruem will only be about 55% complete after Merge”. So let’s assume it’s 55% complete after the Merge.
The Upcoming Ethereum Upgrades
.@VitalikButerin claims that #Ethereum will be able to to process "100,000 transactions per second", following the completion of 5 key phases:
• The Merge
• The Surge
• The Verge
• The Purge
• The SplurgeA quick breakdown of what each stage means for $ETH. 👇 pic.twitter.com/FnaWww8mHZ
— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher) July 22, 2022
- The Merge
- The Surge
- The Verge
- The Purge
- The Splurge
Ethereum Upgrade The Surge
Ethereum has introduced plans to improve scalability by introducing systems that increase Ethereum’s system capacity. This includes layer 2 products, such as sharding and rollups, which will help users operate on the network more easily. In the first phase after Merge comes the “Surge”.
Ethereum’s sharding method divides the network into smaller pieces better known as “shards”. It does this by splitting up data within the blockchain, increasing scalability in the process. In essence, it creates multiple mini-blockchains. Ethereum Merge was the biggest affair than any other post-merge scalability milestone. The sharding will result in 64 linked databases each representing a mini-blockchain.
Sharding could be applied to Ethereum, so that each user could store part of the change in the database, rather than the entire thing.
Post-Merge, Danksharding has increased in popularity among Ethereum devs, wallet-holders and of course traders. While Buterin didn’t specifically mention it during his recent talk in Paris, this prototype allows the Ethereum network to be more scalable and provide people with much ease later on. Danksharding uses the same concept of splitting the network into shards, but instead of using them to increase transaction capacity, it uses them to increase space for groups of data. This allows Ethereum to process larger quantities of data on its blockchain which is a huge change.
Ethereum has been looking into implementing sharding since the beginning of time in 2013, and that implementation is expected to start at some point in 2023 which is exactly after a decade from what it was expected to be.
Ethereum developers are in the process of expanding Ethereum’s scalability abilities to a more secure and confidential level. They hope to be able to maintain this, as well as take advantage of all of the advanced features that come with it by using Rollups.
The Ethereum network will be more scalable following ZK rollups, which could also help scale the system. Sharding is on the horizon, and could allow for millions of transactions to take place which is obviously a landmark to achieve and by this Ethereum can change the whole financial ecosystem.
The Verge
Phase two of the Ethereum blockchain will introduce smaller, more efficient proofs that allow for better scalability by minimizing storage and node size. This phase is called Verge and introduces us with the Verkle trees that will scale the blockchain by reducing node sizes.
The Merkle root contains all previous information about the blocks and can be used as a reliable encryption tool on the blockchain. Merkle trees will create more sustainable encryption by converting blocks into strands of code. Merkle tree is more like a tree of blockchain information with branches, leaves and roots.
You can store large amounts of data on Ethereum blockchain with Verkle trees by showing a small piece of the data and then verifying it. This speeds up the process.
Verkle Trees are still not as popular and more easily understood than other cryptographic solutions like Proofs, the way that they affect scalability and proofs for Ethereum is not yet known.
The Purge + Splurge
The new “The Purge” and then “The Splurge” Ethereum upgrade aims to reduce the amount of historical data and make the process of validating transactions on Ethereum blockchain more efficient. This should minimize network congestion, so that many more transactions can be processed on the Ethereum blockchain. By the end of this phase, Ethereum should be able to process 100,000 transactions per second which is unthinkable at this stage when the merge is successfully over. But now we are hopeful it will be successful as well since we havre already been through the Merge finally.
According to Vitalkin the Splurge will be the fun part in all the upgrades of Ethereum. In the “Splurge” section, we make sure Ethereum is running smoothly and updates are not creating any issues. Working out some of the tough scaling efforts have already been completed.
In the future, with limitations and hiccups in development, there will be a happier phase for Ethereum. However, it’s not coming sooner. Let’s hope for the best.
