The Surge, The Verge, The Purge and Splurge are the next Ethereum upgrades.
Ethereum successfully ‘merged’ on September 15, but more updates are coming to the network: the Surge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge. Taken together, each of the updates will add a new layer of scalability and security to Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
It’s an interesting evolution towards Ethereum’s long-term goal of becoming the “world’s computer.”
While The Merge transitioned from the Blockchain to the PoS ecological consensus mechanism, Ethereum’s transformation was only 55% complete, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Four more curious name updates are on the way, he said recently at a cryptocurrency conference in France. Buterin revealed that the planned “deep changes” are intended to improve the competitiveness of Ethereum by making it a more powerful and robust network.
When all five phases of the upgrades are complete, Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second, Buterin said. Currently, the Blockchain processes between 15 and 20 transactions per second, something that has resulted in network congestion and higher fees.
Shanghai Update
However, since the Merger, the price of Ethereum (ETH), the eponymous token used for transactions on the network, has plummeted by 35%. The asset traded at $2,000 in the days leading up to the event.
A short-term dip, relative to the value of what the Ethereum Blockchain could offer, observers say, not just to the cryptocurrency, but to the world once all five upgrades are completed in the next few years.
Eitan Lavi, co-founder of crypto bridge ChainPort, told BeInCrypto the following:
“Unlike what many understand, The Merger is just one of the five key stages of evolution that the Ethereum protocol is billed for in order to be labeled as a fully efficient Proof-of-Stake protocol.”
Over the next six months, the next major upgrade to the Ethereum network will be Shanghai. This particular update will allow validators, the ETH holders who help secure the Blockchain, to withdraw a portion of their ETH and staking rewards.
The Surge
While The Merger’s number one goal was to reduce Ethereum’s energy usage, which it did by as much as 99.5%, the next major update is expected to bring a new feature called sharding in 2023, which “divides the entire network of a Blockchain into smaller partitions, known as ‘shards,'” said crypto analyst Miles Deutscher.
The Verge
“The Verge” is expected to dramatically reduce Ethereum’s reliance on nodes as a store of history and data. It will introduce so-called “Verkle Trees,” “a powerful upgrade to Merkle tests that allow for much smaller test sizes,” says Deutscher.
The Purge
“The Purge” is expected to significantly reduce the amount of space required to store ETH on a hard drive. This update will eliminate the use of nodes to store Ethereum history, freeing up space, a constant headache for developers.
The Splurge
The last scheduled update is “The Splurge“. This includes what is described as miscellaneous but important extras, “ensuring the network runs smoothly after the previous four updates.”
“The post-Merger design of Ethereum is projected to handle a large amount of data that generally requires enhanced security across the board,” Eitan Lavi, co-founder of ChainPort, told BeInCrypto, emphasizing that:
“Through the evolution of Merkle and Verkle Trees, as well as other innovative technology to be introduced with subsequent updates, the protocol will be able to support early data loading.”
By Audy Castaneda
