Author: Kazu Umemoto, Bankless; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
Ethereum is a vibrant network, with a world-class network of developers helping to keep it at the forefront.
In 2024, Ethereum made significant progress in its evolution centered around aggregation, introducing blob space with the Dencun upgrade, helping L2 reduce transaction costs by 10 to 100 times.
Today, let's look at some Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and Ethereum Requests for Comments (ERCs) that I think are worth following this year. Some of these are already planned for the Pectra upgrade, which we cover comprehensively here, while others may be further out but already have some high-profile supporters.
Next, let's take a look at five notable Ethereum upgrades advocated by builders.
EIP-3074
Another highly anticipated improvement included in the Pectra upgrade is EIP-3074. This upgrade provides anyone interacting with Ethereum a simpler, cheaper, and better user experience. Users will be able to bundle multiple transactions into one, projects can sponsor users' transactions and pay their gas fees, and there is now a way to recover your wallet in case you lose your private keys.
EIP-7251
Validators with a large amount of ETH will appreciate EIP-7251, as they can now earn additional rewards from any ETH staked amount above the 32 ETH standard. Previously, any ETH staked amount above 32 ETH was simply sitting idle. If validators wanted to stake, they had to set up a completely different validator node and have an extra 32 ETH. With 7251, they can set up a validator node and stake all the ETH they hold. Hopefully, this will lead to large institutions running their own validator nodes and participating more in the ecosystem.
The addition of Pectra can also improve the speed of the Ethereum network through validator integration. Projects like Lido can now run fewer validator nodes because they can earn rewards on any ETH staked amount above the 32 ETH baseline.
EIP-7002
Pectra includes: Suppose you want to earn rewards for running a validator node but do not want to deal with all the cumbersome aspects. You can delegate that responsibility to a validator node operator and provide them with the validator key, which is used for authentication and block proposals. At a later point, you want to withdraw your ETH and perform other operations, but the only way to withdraw ETH is to sign a 'voluntary exit message' with the validator key. If the operator decides to deceive you by not signing the message or the validator key is compromised, someone could withhold your ETH for ransom.
With EIP-7002, stakers can withdraw their ETH simply by using a withdrawal key. This eliminates the risk of malicious operators failing to sign exit messages or the validator key being compromised, resulting in your ETH being held for ransom.
ERC-7683
In recent years, intent has been a hot topic in DeFi, and ERC-7683 is a token standard that aims to directly address interoperability issues and define a shared structure for cross-chain intent, 'just like anyone can create, and any solver can implement an order ticket,' according to the ERC website.
The standard was first released in 2024, written by Uniswap and Across Protocol. With the continued adoption of ERC-7683, we can see significant advancements in the field of interoperability.
ERC-7841
ERC-7841 is a very young token standard that gained some attention during the holidays for its approach to solving interoperability. The standard proposes a low-level message format and API for applications to read and write messages from other chains. 7841 eliminates any type of chain-specific logic so that applications can launch seamlessly across multiple chains. There are other EIPs with similar goals, but the ongoing excitement here indicates a strong momentum for interoperability.
