(Kitco News) - The future development for Ethereum just got a new phase – The Scourge – after co-founder Vitalik Buterin added it to the project's six-part technical roadmap on Nov. 5. Buterin revealed the phase via a Twitter post, providing the biggest update to the project since its successful completion of The Merge on Sept. 15.
Since the shift to proof-of-stake was completed, Ethereum has been in the second phase, known as the Surge, which is designed to help the network achieve 10,000 transactions per second through the implementation of scaling solutions like Zero-Knowledge (ZK) rollups.
Previously, the Surge was followed by three additional stages – the Verge, the Purge and the Splurge – but now the Scourge has been inserted as the third stage. The roadmap was originally split into different phases by Buterin in 2018, with the gradual approach meant to ensure that the principles behind each phase were fully developed and upheld.
According to the newly updated roadmap, the goal of the Scourge is to “ensure reliable and credibly neutral transaction inclusion and to avoid centralization and other protocol risks from MEV.”
Maximal (formerly Miner) extracted value (MEV) is the process where a validator is able to dictate how transactions are included in a block, and in what order, which allows them to front-run other participants on the network and extract value at their expense.
Due to the rise in the prevalence of MEV, many now associate the Ethereum network with a higher level of centralization, which Buterin wants to rectify.
According to the project’s co-founder, the Scourge will help create a more “credibly neutral” consensus layer by removing the ability for validators to exploit transactions that occur on the network in their favor. Buterin previously referred to a credibly neutral mechanism as one that “does not discriminate for or against any specific people.”
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| Ethereum is now officially proof-of-stake following the successful Merge |
The full details of the Scourge have not been released yet, but previous posts by Buterin hint at what it could include, such as a “Partial Block Auction” solution where ab block builder is only permitted to decide some of the contents of the block, decreasing their level of influence.
Proposals designed to combat censorship at the consensus layer have also been submitted, including the Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression (SUAVE) solution that was put forward by the Ethereum research and development company Flashbots.
Along with the addition of the Scourge, an update to the Verge was also confirmed in the post by Buterin, which detailed the integration of Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (SNARK) technology into the smart contract platform. SNARKs will bring privacy-preserving features to the Ethereum network that simultaneously allow anonymous transactions to be tracked.
