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 Requests for Comment (ERCs) that I think are worth watching 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 now there is a way to recover your wallet in case you lose your private key.
EIP-7251
Validators with a lot of ETH will appreciate EIP-7251 because they can now earn additional rewards on any ETH staking amount above the 32 ETH standard. Previously, any ETH staking amount 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 participating more in the ecosystem.
Pectra's addition can also improve the speed of the Ethereum network through validator integration. Projects like Lido can now operate with fewer validator nodes because they can earn rewards on any ETH staking 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 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 proposing blocks. At some later point, you want to withdraw your ETH and perform other actions, 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 and does not sign the message or the validator key is leaked, someone can withhold your ETH for ransom.
With EIP-7002, stakers can simply use the withdrawal key to withdraw their ETH. This eliminates the risk of malicious operators failing to sign withdrawal messages or validator keys being leaked, putting your ETH at ransom.
ERC-7683
In recent years, intent has been a hot topic in DeFi, and ERC-7683 is a token standard attempting to address interoperability issues head-on, defining a shared structure for cross-chain intents, "just like anyone can create, and any solver can implement an order ticket," the ERC website states.
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 strong momentum for interoperability.
