Ethereum Co-Founder Explores Strategies to Optimize Blockchain for Rollup-Centric Future
Summary:
Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, and Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter are working on ways to reduce Ethereum's maximum block size, with the aim of optimizing the blockchain for a rollup-centric future. They propose five different solutions which involve increasing block gas limits and disincentivizing the use of calldata to achieve a smaller and less variable block size. They suggest the ideal solution could be striking a balance between increasing the cost of calldata while reducing some operational costs.
In an effort to fine-tune Ethereum's blockchain for a future centered around rollups, co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter are exploring a minimum of five strategies meant to diminish Ethereum's max block size. On February 5, the pair identified the need to optimize block space usage in line with the increasing emphasis on rollups for the foreseeable future, citing that the effective block size has virtually doubled in the past year. The rise might be associated with a surge in rollups utilizing Ethereum for DA and trends such as Inscriptions, the pair further elaborated.
A blog posted by Ethereum Research contained discussions about five varied solutions aimed at increasing block gas limits and discouraging the usage of calldata, thereby decreasing maximum block size and variance in anticipation of accommodating more data blobs in the future. An enhanced block gas limit and increased price for nonzero calldata bytes would result in a smaller, less variable block size, allowing for the addition of more blobs down the line.
The term “Ethereum gas limit” refers to the highest quantity of gas that can be expended when executing contracts or transactions in a singular block. This limit is enforced to prevent block sizes from becoming excessively large, which could impair network performance and synchronization. Calldata, which utilizes gas, intensifies the network load, spurring the pursuit of solutions to augment the gas limit without security compromises.
Buterin and Wahrstätter suggest one straightforward solution: increasing the calldata cost from 16 to 42 gas, which would decrease the maximum block size from 1.78 megabytes to 0.68 megabytes. This could then accommodate an increase in the block gas limit. However, Buterin warns this may disincentive calldata usage for data availability and negatively affect apps like StarkNet demanding significant calldata for on-chain proofs. Alternatively, a second solution might be raising calldata costs while reducing other opcode costs.
The pair mentioned other potential solutions, such as capping calldata per block as suggested in EIP-4488. However, this could also disincentivize calldata usage and impact apps heavily reliant on it. Therefore, establishing a separate calldata fee market, like that used for data blobs, could be an effective solution to increase gas limits. Yet, this proposal risks complicating analysis and implementation.
Lastly, they suggested offering an “EVM loyalty bonus” to compensate for apps inclined to use heavy amounts of calldata. Blobs or large data packets embedded within Ethereum’s blockchain enhance data management and storage and will be introduced with the EIP-4844 Dencun upgrade.
In conclusion, however, Buterin and Wahrstätter found that merely boosting the calldata cost to 42 might be an overly aggressive measure, and introducing separate fee markets could result in excessive complexity. A balanced approach may include increasing calldata cost while simultaneously reducing some operational costs.
In 2021, Buterin had already recommended calldata limits per block to reduce gas costs. In January, he also proposed a 33%-40% increase to the Ethereum gas limit to boost network throughput. While increasing the gas limit allows for a higher number of transactions per block and theoretically enhances the network's overall capacity, it also heightens loads on hardware and the potential risk of network spam and attacks.
Published At
2/6/2024 7:16:59 AM
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