In a Twitter post on November 5th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed the updated technical roadmap of Ethereum, adding a new stage called “The Scourge” to the list of six technical upgrades.
Post the successful merge of the Ethereum network with the Beacon Chain on 15 September, Ethereum developers are working on enabling the next update called “The Surge,” which will increase the transaction speed to 100,000 transactions per second through the introduction of rollups.
Updated roadmap diagram! pic.twitter.com/MT9BKgYcJH
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 4, 2022
The Scourge is the new third stage which has a primary goal to “ensure reliable and credibly neutral transaction inclusion and avoid centralization of network and protocol risks from MEV.”
Vitalik’s focus on credibly neutral transactions comes from the fact that under the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, miners used to select transactions to be placed on the block according to the gas fee, which often led to network congestion and higher gas fees. The phenomenon is called MEV or miner extractable value.
Therefore, to eliminate the risks arising from MEV, Ethereum Foundation implemented EIP-1559, or the burning of transaction fees to discourage miners from prioritizing transactions based on gas fees.
In order of priority of upgrades over the next 6 to 12 months, Ethereum developers are working on enabling Beacon Chain withdrawals, censorship-resistance upgrades, and Proto danksharding (EIP-4844).
After the Twitter post, neither Vitalik Buterin nor the Ethereum foundation has not shared many details about The Scourge and by when it is expected to be implemented.
The next three stages are “The Verge” which will enable the verification of blocks in a super easy way. “The Purge” will simplify the protocol and eliminate technical debt, and limit the costs of participating in the network by deleting old history. And, the last update “The Splurge” is where developers will work on fixing everything on the protocol.
