Vitalik Buterin stated that the long-term goal in Ethereum is 100 thousand transactions per second on layer-1 and layer-2 networks. In the blog post he shared today, Buterin stated that the Ethereum roadmap will continue to be linked to ‘sharding’ and layer-2 protocols centred on ‘rollup’.

“Decentralisation and power must be preserved…”

Writing that they are still experiencing some difficulties in this regard, Buterin said, ‘Our goal is to complete the “rollup” centric roadmap and solve the problems experienced. However, while solving these problems, we need to protect the elements that make Ethereum layer-1 decentralised and robust.’ Buterin also named the next stage of the roadmap as ‘The Surge’.

The Ethereum founder said that in addition to the target of 100 thousand transactions per second, interoperability with layer-2 should also be maximised.

“Data verification should be easy”

Despite the Dencun update and the blobs that come with it, Buterin wrote that the Ethereum network still cannot give what is desired in terms of speed:

“It is necessary to improve data provision to bring the transaction speed to the desired level. In this way, the network will be able to verify the veryi without the need for each node to verify the data and have to store all the data.”

“It may not be enough for payments and social applications”

The Ethereum founder gave a target of 16 MB per ‘slot’ of bandwidth for data provision. This medium-term target allows 58 thousand transactions per second. For ‘rollups’ on Ethereum, this level is currently around 375kB. Buterin stated that even if this medium-term target comes, it is difficult for this level (16 MB) to be sufficient for sectors such as payments and decentralised social applications that require high bandwidth.

“The whole system may destabilise and the value of Ether may decrease”

One of the solutions Buterin proposed to facilitate the scaling of the main network was the creation of a more efficient gas fee system. Buterin wrote that the significant scalability difference between layer-1 and layer-2 could destabilise the entire system and reduce the value of Ether as an asset:

“The easiest way to scale is to simply increase the gas fee limit. However, this could expose the centralisation problem of the main network and weaken other factors that make the Ethereum 1 layer strong. There is still no effective gas fee structure in the mainnet, but we can cheapen some parts of it in a way that does not harm decentralisation. This could include charging different transaction fees for different calculations, or using a more efficient ‘byte’ form of code known as EOF.”

In his blog post on Monday, Buterin also mentioned that the block completion took 15 minutes and 32 ETH was required to be a validator, and stated that he saw these as a problem.