Original title: Ethereum Upgrades to Watch in 2025
Original author: Kazu Umemoto
Original translation: Odaily Planet Daily Husband How
In 2024, Ethereum introduced blob space through the Dencun upgrade, making significant progress in the Rollup-centric development direction and helping L2 reduce transaction costs by 10x to 100x.
Which Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and Ethereum Requests for Comments (ERCs) are worth keeping an eye on in 2025?
This article will review five Ethereum upgrades worth paying attention to, some of which are confirmed to be launched in the Pectra upgrade, while others will take longer to implement but have attracted the attention of some well-known supporters.
EIP-3074
One of the improvements that has received much attention in the Pectra upgrade is EIP-3074. Users can combine multiple transactions into one, projects can fund user transactions and pay their gas fees, and a new method is added to recover the wallet in the event that the user loses the private key.
EIP-3074 introduces new Ethereum opcodes. This system will allow EOA users to authorize smart contracts to perform actions on their behalf in a single transaction, while retaining the security and control of not permanently transferring private keys.
These new opcodes implement the following user-friendly utilities:
Transaction batching – Batching multiple transactions (such as multiple token transfers) into a single operation.
Sponsored Transactions — The ability to have transactions paid for by a third party opens up new ways for applications to pay for gas fees for their users.
Conditional Transactions – complex transaction structures where multiple steps can be chained and conditional execution can be achieved, such as a transaction that is only executed if certain conditions are met, without the need for separate transactions for each step.
Meta Transactions — The ability to sign transactions that can be submitted by another party, e.g., offline or from another interface, without requiring ETH as Gas.
Delegated security — By allowing trusted callers to manage transactions, users can benefit from advanced security models, such as those involving multi-signature setups.
EIP-3074 is the next major step in the future development of the Ethereum account model. It is a short-term remedy before the rise of ERC-4337, but its improvement in user experience (UX) level is significant.
EIP-7251
For validators who hold a large amount of ETH, EIP-7251 is undoubtedly a proposal with higher value. It allows validators to receive rewards for additional staking beyond the standard staking amount of 32 ETH. Before this, any staking amount above 32 ETH was idle. If a validator wanted to stake additional ETH, he had to set up a brand new validation node and invest an additional 32 ETH. With EIP-7251, validators can use a single validation node to stake all their ETH.
This improvement is expected to attract large institutions to run their own validator nodes and further participate in the Ethereum ecosystem.
In addition, this proposal, as part of the Pectra upgrade, may also increase the speed of the Ethereum network through the integration of validator nodes. For example, projects like Lido can reduce the number of validator nodes running and receive rewards above the base staking amount of 32 ETH.
EIP-7002
As part of the Pectra upgrade, EIP-7002 addresses some major risk issues in validator node operations.
For example, if you want to get the rewards for running a validator node but don't want to deal with the complex operations, you can delegate this task to a validator node operator and give them the validation key (the validation key is used to verify and propose blocks). However, when you want to withdraw ETH, you must sign a "voluntary withdrawal message" with the validation key to complete the operation. If the operator deliberately makes things difficult and does not sign this message, or the validation key is leaked, your ETH may be maliciously withheld or even blackmailed.
EIP-7002 provides a solution that allows stakers to withdraw ETH simply by using the withdrawal key. This improvement eliminates the risk of malicious operators rejecting withdrawal messages and reduces the possibility of ETH being seized after the verification key is leaked.
ERC-7683
Intents have been one of the hottest topics in DeFi over the past few years. ERC-7683 is a token standard that aims to directly address the problem of cross-chain interoperability and define a shared structure for cross-chain intents. This standard is "like an order ticket that anyone can create and any solver can fulfill."
ERC-7683 was first proposed in 2024 and was jointly drafted by Uniswap and Across Protocol. ERC-7683 aims to standardize Intents, bringing multiple benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem:
Unifying Ethereum: Establishing common standards for cross-chain operations across L2 and sidechains, supporting Ethereum’s goal of being the leading decentralized application platform.
Achieve interoperability: Standardize order and settlement interfaces to enable seamless cross-chain execution.
Eliminate fragmentation: Provide a common framework to coordinate different systems and achieve smoother cross-chain operations.
Enhanced user experience: Provide users with simplified, intuitive, and frictionless cross-chain interactions.
Improved liquidity: Allowing DApps to access a cross-chain shared filling network, providing deeper liquidity.
Speed up transactions: Reduce failure rates and speed up transaction times by promoting competition among fillers.
Driving Innovation: Changing the cross-chain landscape by fostering collaboration and encouraging innovative solutions on Ethereum.
ERC-7841
ERC-7841 is a novel token standard that proposes a low-level message format and API for applications to send and receive messages to and from other chains.
ERC-7841 abstracts chain-specific logic from the application, meaning that the same application can be deployed on multiple chains without changing the way it sends/receives messages.
ERC-7841 is a modular foundation that specifies only the information needed to route messages between applications. This allows specific message types (such as bridges or intents) to be flexibly built on top of a single interface, rather than for each message type.
ERC-7841 is compatible with both synchronous messaging protocols (such as CIRC) and asynchronous messaging protocols (such as most existing protocols and CIRC).
While there are other EIPs centered around similar goals, the continued excitement surrounding ERC-7841 shows strong momentum in the interoperability space.
