Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, recently amended his platform’s roadmap to avoid censorship and boost decentralisation of its network, it was found on Saturday.
In a tweet on 4 November, Bukerin stated the addition to the Ethereum technical roadmap, Scourge, aims to expand the number of transactions per second to 100,000 via rollups.
Updated roadmap diagram! pic.twitter.com/MT9BKgYcJH
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 4, 2022
The news comes as Ethereum updated its platform, moving Scourge to the third stage following the platform’s proof-of-stake (PoS) network, where it remained in its Surge stage.
Scourge aims to ensure “reliable and credibly neutral transaction inclusion” while avoiding centralisation and other protocol risks from MEV [maximum extractable value],” namely amid concerns over miners exploiting transactions on its network.
MEV prioritises specific people on networks by selecting transactions to place in a block in a specific order, allowing miners to duplicate winning deals from mempools and execute transactions with priority. This has sparked concerns over Ethereum’s neutrality regarding centralisation and censorship.
The Scourge of Ethereum
In a 2020 blog post, Buterin explained that credible neutrality was where a platform “does not discriminate for or against any specific people.”
Buterin has proposed a “partial block auction” to limit an individual’s decision-making on the contents of a specific block. Additional ideas included the Single Unifying Auctions for Value Expression (SUAVE), developed by Ethereum research and development wing Flashbots.
He also told the Verge in a recent statement that Ethereum would integrate its Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (SNARK) on the blockchain. The new tool will boost privacy while facilitating tracing of anonymous transactions.
