Ethereum Researcher Teases ETH 3.0 Proposal to Enhance Scalability
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake announced a new proposal aimed at enhancing scalability for Ethereum, referred to as ETH 3.0. In a post on November 11, he hinted at an "ambitious" initiative involving a complete redesign of the Ethereum consensus layer to tackle existing scalability issues.
Announcement of an announcement!
Tomorrow at 5pm on the Devcon main stage I will unveil my most ambitious initiative to date. For one year I have been thinking about what a from-scratch redesign of the Ethereum consensus layer could look like. The goal is to suggest a credible…
— Justin Ðrake 🦇🔊 (@drakefjustin) November 11, 2024
Drake's objective includes proposing a strategy for a Beacon Chain roadmap, with a full presentation scheduled for Devcon in Bangkok on November 12.
Joseph Lubin commented that this proposal may lead to a reevaluation of Sharding development and the creation of a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) at layer 1. This would enable the execution of multiple identical shards. Lubin noted that sharding was previously deemed unfeasible but now presents new opportunities:
“The interesting thing about that, that way of using layer 1 wasn’t really possible a few years ago... a lot of stuff came back.”
Lubin emphasized learnings from zero-knowledge developments, aiming to improve Ethereum Layer-1 mainnet and enhance scalability solutions. He explained that optimizing computation can significantly increase transaction throughput.
Ethereum 3.0 Rumors
Following Drake’s announcement, speculation about Ethereum 3.0 gained traction within the community. Doug Colkitt, founder of Ambient Finance, suggested that the upcoming announcement might involve a "second merge" into a new consensus with 1-second block times and a native zkEVM:
Rumor is Eth 3.0 announcement this week will be a second merge into a new consensus targeting 1 second block times, SSF and native zkEVM.
Native zkEVM in particular is huge. The gas limit can be eliminated entirely. Builders can build arbitrarily large blocks, since nodes only…
— Doug Colkitt (@0xdoug) November 11, 2024
If accurate, a native zkEVM could represent a significant advancement, potentially removing gas limits and allowing larger block sizes while only requiring nodes to verify the snark, leaving bandwidth as the sole scaling constraint.
Ethereum recently experienced a notable 38% price increase, surpassing $3,400 and moving towards $4,000.