Opportunities in the Ethereum Roadmap, DevCon, and the Pectra Upgrade

What valuable information can we capture from Ethereum's roadmap, the recent DevCon, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade early next year?

Written by: Zeqing Guo, Jeffrey Hu

Looking back at history, it is not difficult to find that many of the cutting-edge technical discussions in the Ethereum developer community have ultimately evolved into current everyday application products, from DEX, lending, to rollup, DA, all of which are examples of this. This also contains opportunities for investment layout.

So, at this point in early 2025, what valuable information can we capture from Ethereum's roadmap, the recent DevCon, and the upcoming Pectra upgrade? This article attempts to summarize and discuss.

Ethereum's Roadmap

The Ethereum roadmap has always been an important reference for observing future development directions, including various phases such as The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. Vitalik has also been actively publishing articles in October to introduce the content of each phase. Among them:

The Merge: Primarily completed the transition from the execution layer to the consensus layer, thus achieving the shift from PoW to PoS. However, The Merge also includes some improvements in the consensus protocol, such as single-slot finality and lowering the validator threshold.
The Surge: The main discussion focuses on future scalability, improving the underlying layer to better serve rollups. EIP-4844 has been launched, and future key content includes PeerDAS to reduce node pressure and cross-rollup interactions.
The Scourge: Mainly aims to reduce some issues related to MEV, including builder centralization and MEV value being captured by large LSTs.
The Verge: Includes the transition from Merkle trees to Verkle trees and the Snarkification of the EVM.
The Purge: Aims to reduce the pressure on Ethereum node data storage and state maintenance by deleting or archiving historical data. It will also clean up some technical debt.
The Splurge: Some more cutting-edge improvements, including the underlying EVM, account abstraction, and other cryptographic applications (such as VDF).

We have extracted the key improvements of these phases in the table below, introducing their main effects and summarizing the current progress.

DevCon

In addition to the roadmap, another valuable information channel is the recent Ethereum DevCon conference. It discussed current issues and potential solutions.

One of the most eye-catching topics at DevCon may belong to Beam Chain. The slightly mocking yet inaccurate term "Ethereum 3.0" reflects the community's desire for new development directions. Beam Chain proposed many underlying improvements, including Snarkification, and improvements in block generation and staking. However, the roadmap is expected to take about 5 years to complete, so it does not require too much additional attention for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjuenkv1zrw

Topics related to rollups remained a hot topic during DevCon. The most discussed issue was the fragmentation of liquidity between rollups and the difficulties in interaction that affect user experience. Many speeches and panels addressed this issue or related solutions. Additionally, the current technical maturity of L2 was also discussed at the conference, as currently, only Optimism and Arbitrum have reached Stage 1 (with permissioned fraud proof), while most other L2 projects remain at Stage 0 (centralized upgrades, no fraud proof, etc.), needing to synchronize with L1 upgrades.

Furthermore, topics such as chain abstraction, pre-confirmation, cryptographic applications, and future upgrades were also discussed in depth during DevCon. We will focus on the Pectra upgrade content in the next section.

Pectra Upgrade

Recently, the Ethereum Pectra upgrade, expected to be completed in Q1 2025, is worth paying attention to, as it will include multiple related transformations from the underlying layer to the user end.

EIP-7702: AA

The most relevant to users is EIP-7702, which builds on the design of EIP-3074 and further develops EIP-4337, granting all EOA accounts the ability to "temporarily" convert to smart contract accounts, which can further improve user experience (one signature for multiple transactions, 0 gas, etc.). However, it may also increase security risks such as signature phishing. EIP-7702 will apply to all EOAs, so wallets and other products should also be updated to respond to this upgrade. Overall, the implementation of EIP-7702 will bring new opportunities for all AA projects. More information can be found in our previous report.

EIP-7691: Increase Blob Count

Pectra plans to adjust the target value of blob count in each block from 3 to 6, and increase the maximum blob count from 6 to 9. Blobs provide cheaper storage space for rollups, and increasing the blob count will further reduce the cost of rollups at the expense of increased node operating costs, enhancing Ethereum's DA competitiveness. Therefore, this will further benefit rollup projects. Additionally, the adjustment of target and maximum values will make gas decrease more rapidly when blobs are unused, and gas will increase more slowly when blobs are fully loaded to the maximum limit.

EIP-7251: Increase Staking Limit

Pectra plans to raise the current staking limit from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. Ethereum staking service providers and whales will no longer need to spread their ETH across multiple nodes but can consolidate it into a single node, reducing the number of validators in staking.

Future Opportunities

All the aforementioned technical changes or research discussions may bring about new changes and opportunities. We summarize some of the more significant opportunities below.

Interoperability Between Rollups

Both from the roadmap and many shares at DevCon, it is clear that liquidity interoperability and interactivity between Layer 2 (rollups) are key concerns for developers.

Currently, the community has various solutions at different levels to address the liquidity and interoperability issues between rollups.

Based Rollup: Since many L2s currently use their relatively centralized sequencers to implement transaction ordering and then publish to L1, they cannot achieve timely interaction. One solution is to implement ordering functionality through L1 to ensure the atomicity of interactions between L2s that use this ordering functionality.
Shared Sequencer: Another implementation method, aside from based-rollups, is for L2s to share a set of sequencers to complete interactions.
Cross-chain Intents: In addition to solving problems from the sequencer level, using intents to meet cross-rollup needs is another solution.

Currently, these solutions are being implemented, such as Spire Labs' Based Stack for implementing based rollups, which is expected to go live in Q1 2025; Shared sequencer-related projects like Astria, Espresso, and Polygon AggLayer are being launched and iterated; ERC-7683 is being used by Unichain, Arbitrum, etc., to solve cross-chain liquidity issues; and Optimism's ERC-7802 can implement SuperchainERC20 to support a unified standard for assets and liquidity transfer within the superchain ecosystem. These different solutions may compete for dominance in the market in 2025.

Account Abstraction

Since it involves all EOA account addresses, the implementation of EIP-7702 will provide a new opportunity for AA projects. Moreover, EIP-7702, combined with chain abstraction, intents, and other functionalities, may build more complex cross-chain or multi-chain interaction capabilities. However, due to the previous lackluster market performance of ERC-4337, the Pectra upgrade may be the last opportunity to validate PMF in the AA track.

Therefore, after the Pectra upgrade in Q1 next year, teams that participate early in EIP-7702 and are prepared, such as Zerodev, may experience a new wave of growth, and the specific effects will soon be revealed.

Cryptographic Applications

Whether in the Ethereum roadmap or the discussions at DevCon, cryptographic technologies and applications remain a significant topic. On the technical side, zkEVM and zkVM frameworks are gradually maturing, and the combination of ZKP with MPC, FHE, etc., may lead to more application combinations. Additionally, some cutting-edge cryptographic technology discussions during DevCon, such as the indistinguishability obfuscation (iO) hailed as the crown jewel of cryptography, may also receive more attention.

On the application side, there will be many opportunities for cryptographic technologies at the consumer end. Verification applications, including ZK Email (especially the implementation based on Aztec Noir) and zkTLS, may see more adoption. Furthermore, recent events, such as the OFAC's sanctions against Tornado Cash being deemed overreach, may alleviate some concerns regarding compliance for privacy applications.

Special thanks to Zhixiong Pan and Yan for their review and suggestions on this article!

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