Ethereum in 2023

Upcoming updates to the Ethereum network

Ethereum has many upcoming updates to look forward to in 2023.

Ethereum’s developers opt to delay the Surge (the network’s sequel to the Merge), instead prioritising ETH 2 withdrawals.

Ethereum’s developers are focused on Beacon Chain withdrawals for the Shanghai Update, the next update for the network, expected to go live in the third quarter of 2023.

The update is driving the EIP-4844 discussion, with an activation of proto-danksharding (the Surge) in a separate update, with an expectation of going live post-Shanghai update.

The Surge is expected to improve the network’s performance, as well as decrease transaction costs. This, in turn, will allow greater scalability of L2 roll-ups. Proto-danksharding is the first of two-part processes that Ethereum plans to implement to achieve full sharding, dividing Ethereum’s workload across small chains working in tandem. Upon implementation, EIP-4844 will allow downloads of a small portion of each block produced by the network through L2 validations. Simultaneously giving the ability to validators to delete historical data older than 30 days, allowing a reduction of computational barriers to become a validator.

Looking forward to further discussions on Ethereum developments in 2023.