Original author: Kazu Umemoto
Original translation: Odaily Planet Daily
Reprint: Luke, Mars Finance
In 2024, Ethereum made significant progress toward a Rollup-centered development direction with the Dencun upgrade, introducing blob space and helping L2 reduce transaction costs by 10 to 100 times.
What Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and Ethereum Requests for Comments (ERCs) should we closely monitor in 2025?
This article will review five noteworthy Ethereum upgrades, some of which are set to launch in the Pectra upgrade, while others will take longer to be realized but are gaining attention from notable supporters.
EIP-3074
A significant improvement attracting attention in the Pectra upgrade is EIP-3074. Users can bundle multiple transactions into one, allowing project teams to fund user transactions and pay their Gas fees, while also introducing a method to recover wallets in the event of key loss.
EIP-3074 introduces new Ethereum opcodes. The system will allow EOA users to authorize smart contracts to perform operations on their behalf in a single transaction while maintaining security and control without permanently transferring their private keys.
These new opcodes implement the following user-friendly utilities:
Transaction Batching - Batch processing multiple transactions (such as multiple token transfers) into a single operation.
Sponsored Transactions - The ability to pay for transactions via third parties opens new avenues for applications to pay Gas fees on behalf of their users.
Conditional Transactions - Complex transaction structures that can link multiple steps and enable conditional execution, such as executing a transaction only if certain conditions are met, without needing to execute a transaction for each step separately.
Meta Transactions - The ability to sign transactions that can be submitted by another party, such as signing transactions offline or from other interfaces without needing 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 significant step in the future development of the Ethereum account model. It is a short-term remedy before the rise of ERC-4337, but its enhancement of user experience (UX) levels is significant.
EIP-7251
For validators holding a large amount of ETH, EIP-7251 is undoubtedly a proposal of higher value. It allows validators to earn additional staking rewards beyond the standard 32 ETH staking amount. Previously, any stake amount exceeding 32 ETH was idle. Validators wishing to stake extra ETH had to set up a brand new validation node and stake an additional 32 ETH. Through EIP-7251, validators can stake all their held ETH using a single validation node.
This improvement is expected to attract large institutions to run their own validation nodes, further participating in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Additionally, this proposal, as part of the Pectra upgrade, may enhance the Ethereum network's operating speed through the integration of validation nodes. For example, projects like Lido could reduce the number of running validation nodes and gain rewards above the standard 32 ETH staking amount.
EIP-7002
As part of the Pectra upgrade, EIP-7002 addresses some major risk issues in validation node operations.
For instance, if you want to earn rewards for running a validation node but do not want to handle complex operations, you can delegate this task to a validation node operator and give them your validation key (used to validate and propose blocks). However, when you want to withdraw ETH, you must use the validation key to sign a 'voluntary exit message' to complete the operation. If the operator intentionally obstructs this by not signing the message, or if the validation key is leaked, your ETH could be maliciously withheld or even extorted.
EIP-7002 provides a solution allowing stakers to withdraw ETH simply by extracting keys. This improvement eliminates the risk of malicious operators refusing to sign exit messages and reduces the possibility of ETH being held hostage if validation keys are leaked.
ERC-7683
In recent years, intents have been one of the hot topics in DeFi. ERC-7683 is a token standard designed to directly address cross-chain interoperability issues and define a shared structure for cross-chain intents. This standard is 'like an order ticket that anyone can create and any resolver can fulfill.'
ERC-7683 was first proposed in 2024 and co-drafted by Uniswap and Across Protocol. ERC-7683 aims to standardize Intents, bringing multiple benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem:
Unified Ethereum: Establishing a common standard for cross-chain operations across L2 and sidechains, supporting Ethereum's goal as a leading decentralized application platform.
Achieving Interoperability: Standardizing order and settlement interfaces for seamless cross-chain execution.
Eliminating Fragmentation: Providing a universal framework to coordinate different systems for smoother cross-chain operations.
Enhancing User Experience: Providing users with streamlined, intuitive, and frictionless cross-chain interactions.
Increasing Liquidity: Allowing DApps access to cross-chain shared filling networks, providing deeper liquidity.
Accelerating Transactions: Reducing failure rates and speeding up transaction times by promoting competition among fillers.
Driving Innovation: Transforming the cross-chain landscape by facilitating collaboration and encouraging innovative solutions on Ethereum.
ERC-7841
ERC-7841 is an innovative token standard that proposes a low-level message format and API for applications to send messages to other chains or receive messages from other chains.
ERC-7841 abstracts chain-specific logic from applications, meaning the same application can be deployed across multiple chains without altering the way it sends/receives messages.
ERC-7841 serves as a modular foundation that only specifies the information necessary to route messages between applications. This allows specific message types (like bridging or intent message types) to be flexibly built on a single interface rather than requiring a separate interface for each message type.
ERC-7841 is compatible with synchronous messaging protocols (like CIRC) and asynchronous messaging protocols (like most existing protocols and CIRC).
While there are some other EIPs with similar goals, the ongoing discussions sparked by ERC-7841 indicate strong momentum in the interoperability space.
