Ethereum is the second most popular cryptocurrency in the world, second only to Bitcoin in the investors’ choices, so it makes sense that all news pertaining to it will be discussed and debated in the community. If you’re still new to the world of crypto investing, it makes sense to feel intimidated by everything you see. To be successful in this community, you need to learn and become familiar with everything that the marketplace entails. Doing technical analysis and reading the latest metrics in order to determine which direction the market is more likely to take is certainly not simple, but it is the only way to ensure you’re making the right choices instead of moving randomly through the volatility and price fluctuations.
Even though ETH USD is regarded as much more stable than the other altcoins, it is not immune to the factors impacting the entire market, meaning that you still have to be careful and do your research before you start investing. The price is currently recording fairly strong performance, emboldening traders to take on more risk, but remember that whether or not you should do the same depends on your personal goals and expectations. You must also pay attention to the latest news and developments in the field, as crypto’s decentralized nature makes it highly susceptible to these influences.
Security and scalability
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has recently discussed the introduction of the EIP-7983 proposal, an addition that would cap transaction gas at 16.77 million. This move could boost the security and stability of the network, as well as boost its zkVM compatibility. Performance would naturally benefit as well, taking Ethereum to the next level. Even though the change might seem significant, Ethereum is well-known for its continuous innovations and changes. The EIP-7983 refers to individual transactions, with the limit set to enhance the network’s resilience against DoS vectors.
When stability improves, the transactions and processing become more predictable as well, and you will have an easier time investing. Creating a long-term strategy becomes much simpler, and you don’t have to be apprehensive about the ways in which your portfolio will perform in the event of a sudden shift. At the moment, ETH’s architecture is designed in such a way that one transaction can be enough to consume a block’s entire gas limit. This means that denial-of-service attacks are probable and that the network will be unpredictable overall. When individual transactions are capped, the gas is distributed more evenly, and the risk of a venture overwhelming the entire block capacity becomes significantly less likely.
zkVM
A zkVM or zero-knowledge virtual machine integrates cryptographic processes to guarantee the privacy and security of a blockchain network via the integration of zero-knowledge proofs. These features allow for verifying program execution without disclosing any information about the data associated with the program or its internal logic. They manage to achieve all this while also fulfilling the tasks completed by standard virtual machines.
All of the program’s instructions can also be passed as public input, meaning that everyone can see exactly which feature is being tested at any given time. The zkVMs are not focused on isolating either operating systems or apps; they aim to guarantee that computations are performed securely and privately. This characteristic makes them highly valuable due to their ability to drive accessibility, and is particularly noteworthy when it comes to enhancing blockchain technology, serving as a means of propelling the systems into the world of mass adoption. However, more developments are needed to ensure that this becomes a practical reality.
The EIP-7983 has been designed to improve compatibility with zk virtual machines as well. This is the result of splitting large transactions into smaller chunks, making them easier to manage. All transactions exceeding the gas limit will be rejected automatically during block validation, preventing them from entering the network and being included in new blocks. Since this cap would operate entirely independently of the general block gas limit, miners and validators will still be able to adjust their choices as long as they remain within the consensus rules.
The future of Ethereum
The 16.77 million value was chosen as the cap by both Buterin and Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Applied Research Group of the Ethereum Foundation, whose work deals with protocols and empirical data analysis. The figure was chosen as a means of balancing performance with complexity and accommodating the current advances in DeFi technology. The idea is to ensure deployments and guarantee that the technology can fulfill its use cases without introducing any unnecessary risks. 16.77 is the perfect area for the current use cases, including contract deployments and advanced decentralized finance interactions without compromising on the performance characteristics.
At the moment, the proposal isn’t backward-compatible for transactions surpassing the limit, but the developers have remarked that most of the ventures will most likely not exceed this area and are instead much more likely to fall well below the price. This is good news as it means that the impact on both users and those working to maintain the networks will be reduced. EIP-7983 doesn’t exist in a vacuum, as it was built upon the developments of previous protocols, such as EIP-7825, which was also intended to increase predictability rates and boost transaction execution.
The bottom line
Changes and developments within the Ethereum ecosystem are nothing new, as the network continually seeks to improve itself. Discussions about what needs to be done to simplify Ethereum’s base protocol and make it more minimalist have been ongoing for quite some time now, but it remains to be seen if the introduction of the EIP-7983 will be the answer. In the past, Buterin has talked about the possibility of restructuring ETH’s entire architecture to change the execution, consensus, and shared components.
The crypto marketplace continues to change and evolve, with Ethereum spearheading many of the changes. Investors want to operate in ecosystems they know they can trust and that will safeguard the integrity of their portfolios. To achieve this in an environment that is targeted by increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity risks, the blockchains themselves need to evolve.
