Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has released an update towards the Ethereum roadmap, announcing changes aimed to mitigate censorship, block verification, centralization, along with other issues.
Inside a Saturday tweet, the Ethereum mastermind added the Scourge, a brand new stage towards the Ethereum technical roadmap, which strives to enhance censorship resistance and decentralization from the Ethereum network.
Ethereum completed its much-anticipated migration in the energy-intensive proof-of-work (Bang) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS) on September 15, a phase known as the Merge.
Following a Merge, Ethereum joined its second stage — the Surge — with the aim of dealing with 100,000 transactions per second through rollups. As reported by the previous roadmap, there have been as many as five stages, with the remainder to be the Verge, Purge, and Splurge.
However, the now expanded six-part technical roadmap includes the Scourge because the new third stage, that will then be adopted through the formerly-known stages — the Verge, the Purge, and also the Splurge.
Based on the Ethereum roadmap, the aim of the Scourge would be to “ensure reliable and credibly neutral transaction inclusion and also to avoid centralization along with other protocol risks from MEV.”
Furthermore, Ethereum block production depends on inclusion lists or alternative selection mechanisms. Also, Proposer/builder separation (PBS) specifications and MEV burn are incorporated. The milestone within the new phase is “In-protocol PBS.”
The Ethereum creator stated the alterations reflect “more concrete milestones in each and every category” along with a more explicit role for quantum-proofness like a necessary element of the “endgame” protocol.
Buterin Requires “Credibly Neutral” Consensus Layer Among Rising Centralization Concerns
Buterin continues to be requesting a far more “credibly neutral” consensus layer as Ethereum is becoming connected having a greater amount of centralization and censorship following a Merge.
Buterin has previously described a credibly neutral mechanism as you, which “does not discriminate for or against any sort of people. The mechanism treats everybody fairly, towards the extent that it is easy to treat people fairly inside a world where everyone’s abilities and requires are extremely different.”
However, following a Merge, the proportion of blocks compliant using the U.S Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has arrived at record highs close to 73%, an amount many say is way too high.
Within an October 15 tweet, Anthony Sassano, Ethereum bull and founding father of The Daily Gwei, stated that censorship resistance is “more important than scaling” in the current moment.