Vitalik Buterin unveils Ethereum’s primary areas of focus for 2024
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has unveiled an updated roadmap for the network’s plans in 2024. Buterin shared the roadmap on Dec. 30 through a series of posts, revealing that it will only feature minor changes compared to the previous year. The roadmap outlines six main focuses for Ethereum in 2024, namely the Merge, the Surge, the Scourge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge.
The Merge, a significant element of the roadmap, aims to maintain a straightforward and robust proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. This element gained prominence in 2022 when it led to the integration of the Ethereum mainnet and the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake blockchain. This integration enabled Ethereum to transition from a power-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to PoS, resulting in a significant reduction in the network’s overall energy consumption.
The roadmap also highlights Ethereum’s focus on single-slot finality (SSF), which ensures that changes to blocks on the blockchain cannot be reversed without burning at least 33% of the total staked ETH. Additionally, Buterin emphasizes the Scourge priority, which aims to combat economic centralization in Ethereum, specifically regarding MEV (Miner Extractable Value) and liquid stake pooling.
Recently, Buterin expressed his plans to reintegrate the original principles of the “cypherpunk” revolution into the blockchain. He envisions Ethereum as a universally accessible, decentralized hard drive that utilizes peer-to-peer communication and file storage. However, he acknowledges that Ethereum’s focus shifted towards financial applications in 2017. Buterin hopes to revive the core “cypherpunk” ideals of decentralization, open participation, resistance to censorship, and trustworthiness.
Despite minor setbacks and challenges, Buterin’s updated 2024 vision for Ethereum paints an optimistic future. Analysts, such as Raoul Pal, predict a potential price rise for ETH of up to $5,300. Pal bases his forecast on the liquidity indicator, a tool that analysts use to predict potential price shifts of assets. He also highlights the potential impact of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Ethereum’s progress, suggesting that the introduction of a Bitcoin spot ETF could pave the way for an Ethereum ETF and revitalize the Ethereum ecosystem.
Analysts at CryptosRUs share Pal’s optimistic outlook, predicting a surge in ETH’s growth starting in Q1 2024. They attribute this upward trajectory to factors such as positive market sentiment, the seasonality of ETH and Bitcoin, and the upcoming Dencun upgrade.
Furthermore, Ethereum’s network activity has seen significant increases, with new addresses on the network spiking by about 17.5% and active addresses experiencing a boost of roughly 23%. The number of Ethereum addresses without ETH balances has also surged by around 74%, indicating growing interest and adoption. Over the past 30 days, the average count of Ethereum addresses was approximately 102.72 million, more than double the number for Bitcoin.
Overall, Buterin’s updated roadmap and positive market indicators suggest a promising future for Ethereum.
