What does the post-merger roadmap for Ethernet look like?

The Ether merger is the highly anticipated upgrade that will see the blockchain transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, hailed as one of the biggest upgrades in the history of the cryptocurrency industry and set to usher in a new era of Ether as a modern and environmentally friendly blockchain. Contrary to popular belief, the merger is not the final upgrade to Ether, and the multi-year roadmap detailed by founder Vitalik Buterin details exciting and revolutionary plans to make Ether the backbone of the next generation of the Internet.

A few days ago, at the annual Ether conference EthCC in Paris, Vitalik gave a 45-minute speech detailing Ether's long-term vision and what it will look like after the merger. Surprisingly, he noted that he believes Ether will only be 55% complete after the merger, meaning that Ether is less than half of its final state. In his roadmap released last December, he detailed five different goals: Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge. these goals will help Ether reach its end state. Let's take a look at these goals and why they are so important.

The first item on the Ethernet roadmap is Merge, which is underway. As mentioned earlier, Merge marks a shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-equity, which will make the blockchain 99.97% more energy efficient and pave the way for other upgrades. With an environmentally friendly blockchain, more ESG-conscious companies and investors will feel comfortable using Ether, which will increase adoption and usage. In addition, the upgrades will reduce the issuance rate of Ether, which is highly likely to become a deflationary asset. The presumed date of the merger is September 19, which means we are only two months away from this momentous event. The blockchain has never changed its consensus mechanism, and the merger has been described as changing the engine of a plane in flight. Despite being very difficult, developers have made great progress and a successful transition seems possible.

The next Surge, aims to bring massive scalability improvements through sharding technology. Binning is essentially a method of breaking a blockchain into several different interconnected chains, each with its own throughput. Its ability to allow higher throughput, coupled with Layer 2 Rollup, could help Ether scale to theoretically process 100,000 transactions per second. According to the Ether website, slicing should come sometime in 2023, being the next upgrade after the merger. With the scalability issue resolved, Ether will be able to compete directly with the alternative first tier, and its value proposition will increase significantly.

The next upgrade, Verge, is probably the hardest to understand without a technical background. Basically, it will introduce Verkle Tree, which will reduce the storage requirements for nodes, leading to more decentralization and scalability. The storage requirements are so small that it is possible to run an Ether node without any hard drive space.

Purge, similar to Verge, helps increase efficiency and reduces storage requirements for nodes. Today, Ethernet verifiers need to download the entire blockchain history from 2014 onwards, which takes up terabytes of space. Purge wants to change that so that customers don't need to hold on to more than a year's worth of storage space. According to Vitalik, it may allow nodes to run on smartphones.

Splurge is a series of miscellaneous upgrades that, in order to ensure the network runs smoothly after the first four phases are processed, will help improve the overall Ether experience and create more opportunities for developers to create interesting account management systems.

If Ether's development goals are met, it will help solidify the blockchain's position as a major smart contract platform. This roadmap will likely take years to fully complete, and there will certainly be other changes and unforeseen upgrades along the way. Nonetheless, this exciting outlook on the future of the protocol should get people excited about the vision for Ether.