The Ethereum Merge was completed on September 15, 2022 with the much desired merger, which culminated in the transition of its consensus mechanism from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS).
The transition is a milestone that the ETH founder Vitalik Buterin dreamed of for his blockchain.
Currently ETH is suffering the market decline, but this is not enough to make long-term investors desist still convinced of the success of the market’s No. 2 cryptocurrency!
Unfortunately, at the moment the optimists will have to wait, given that in the last month (and in particular right after the Merge) the price of the crypto has collapsed by 19.50%, settling at 1,378 USD.
However the creator, Vitalik Buterin claims that his project is far from finished, indeed! In the coming years, in fact, he plans to work on the execution of the Ethereum network, drastically increasing the number of transactions and increasingly reducing gas tariffs.
But the most amazing thing is that there are 4 more updates coming up: Surge, Verge, Purge and Splurge.
Table of Contents
1. “Surge”, a faster network
ETH’s growth is not over yet. To many it seems absurd, but there are still upgrades to be completed soon on Buterin’s network. The first was called “Surge” and will be about the speed of the network.
Vitalik said his blockchain can currently process up to 20 transactions per second. However, according to the calculations, it could process, including rollups and sharding, about 100,000 transactions per second.
Surge will take care of making life easier for the users who manage the nodes in order to protect the network, also drastically increasing the speed with which transactions will be performed.
2. “Verge”, another step towards decentralization
The second name is “Verge”. This second update named in the developer team’s roadmap will focus on greater decentralization of the Ethereum network. There will be database optimization and an additional incentive to reduce network nodes.
Users will thus be able to become blockchain validators without having to store a huge amount of data on their computers, thus swelling their ranks. Also there will be greater scalability, an element not to be underestimated at all.
3. “Purge”, to simplify Ethereum
The third planned upgrade aims to eliminate the data history to make room within the blockchain.
What does it mean? In short, “Purge” will take care of further simplifying Ethereum, not requiring every unit of the network to archive the history.
Reducing the amount of this data will make the blockchain validation process more efficient for the validators who will use Proof of Stake as is now known. This should minimize network congestion and allow for the processing of far more transactions on the blockchain.
Vitalik Buterin himself enthuses that at this point in the update, ETH should be able to process around 100,000 transactions per second. Not bad, isn’t it?
4. “Splurge”, the surprise of Vitalik Buterin
This last phase is still a bit of a mystery, but it is believed to be a sort of “extra” not yet well defined.
Basically what we know about the so called “Splurge” is that it will take care of making sure that the whole system is working properly, fixing any problems and making sure that all previous updates do not create problems.
This final stage is still a long way off, especially and we think the Merge ended just over a week ago.
Considering the current situation, it would not surprise any unexpected events along the way, since there were also delays in the merger just completed.
Splurge, if and when it finally arrives, will be an iconic moment for Buterin and his team, marking a well-deserved celebratory phase for the whole project.
Read also: Top cryptocurrencies to buy and hold forever
When are the 4 Ethereum updates expected?
All this revolves around the concept of “sharding“, a process that aims to divide a database to lighten the load and promote scalability.
According to some rumors, this upgrade plan divided into 4 parts should start as early as 2023, but there are still no certainties about it!
We know, however, that they will not be 4 exactly separate updates, but a development that will take place more or less in parallel.
In this probable final development, the history and storage requirements for validators will be further reduced, ensuring a secure decentralization of Ethereum and thus decreasing the entry costs to validate the network.
