Author: Kazu Umemoto, Bankless; Compiled by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
Ethereum is a vibrant network, supported by a world-class developer community that helps it stay ahead.
In 2024, Ethereum made significant progress in its evolution centered around aggregation, introducing blob space through the Dencun upgrade, which helped L2 reduce transaction costs by 10 to 100 times.
Today, let's take a look at some Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and Ethereum Request for Comments (ERCs) that are worth following this year. Some of these are planned for the Pectra upgrade, which we cover comprehensively here, while others may be further off but already have some high-profile supporters.
Next, let's examine five notable Ethereum upgrades championed 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, and projects can sponsor users' transactions and pay their gas fees. There is now a way to recover your wallet in case you lose your private key.
EIP-7251
Validators with a large amount of ETH will appreciate EIP-7251, as they can now earn additional rewards from any ETH staked above the 32 ETH standard. Previously, any ETH staked above 32 ETH was just sitting idle. If validators wanted to stake, they had to set up a completely different validator node and hold an additional 32 ETH. With 7251, they can set up a validator node and stake all the ETH they hold. This is hoped to lead to large institutions running their own validator nodes and engaging more in the ecosystem.
The addition of Pectra can also improve the speed of the Ethereum network through validator consolidation. Projects like Lido can now run fewer validator nodes because they can earn rewards on any ETH staked above the 32 ETH baseline.
EIP-7002
Pectra includes: suppose you want to earn rewards for running a validator node but don’t want to deal with the hassle. You can delegate that responsibility to a validator node operator and provide them with a validator key, which is used for authentication and proposing blocks. At a later point, you want to withdraw your ETH and do other operations, but the only way to withdraw your ETH is to use the validator key to sign a 'voluntary exit message.' If the operator decides to deceive you by not signing the message or the validator key is leaked, someone could withhold your ETH for ransom.
Using EIP-7002, stakers can withdraw their ETH simply by using the withdrawal key. This eliminates the risk of malicious operators not signing withdrawal messages or validator keys being leaked, which could lead to ransom demands for your ETH.
ERC-7683
In the past few years, intention has been a hot topic in DeFi. ERC-7683 is a token standard that aims to address interoperability issues directly and defines a shared structure for cross-chain intentions, 'like any order ticket that anyone can create and any solver can implement,' according to the ERC website.
This standard was first released in 2024, authored by Uniswap and Across Protocol. With the ongoing adoption of ERC-7683, we can see significant progress being made in the field of interoperability.
ERC-7841
ERC-7841 is a very young token standard that garnered 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 seamlessly launch across multiple chains. There are other EIPs with similar goals, but the ongoing excitement here indicates strong momentum for interoperability.
