Original Title: Ethereum Upgrades to Watch in 2025
Original Author: Kazu Umemoto
Original Translation: Odaily Planet Daily
In 2024, Ethereum introduced blob space through the Dencun upgrade, making significant progress in the rollup-centric direction 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 watch in 2025?
This article will review five Ethereum upgrades worth paying attention to, some of which are confirmed to launch in the Pectra upgrade, while others will take a longer time to realize but have garnered interest from some prominent supporters.
EIP-3074
One noteworthy improvement in the Pectra upgrade is EIP-3074. Users can combine multiple transactions into one, and project parties can fund user transactions and pay their Gas fees, while also introducing a new method to recover wallets in case users lose their private keys.
EIP-3074 introduces new Ethereum opcodes. This system will allow EOA users to authorize smart contracts to perform operations on their behalf in a single transaction while retaining security and control without permanently transferring their 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 for third parties to pay for transactions opens new avenues for applications to cover Gas fees for their users.
Conditional transactions - complex transaction structures where multiple steps can be linked and executed conditionally, such as executing a transaction only if certain conditions are met, without needing to transact separately for each step.
Meta-transactions - the ability to sign a transaction that can be submitted by another party, such as signing a transaction 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 serves as a short-term remedy before the rise of ERC-4337, but its improvement in 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 rewards for additional staking beyond the standard 32 ETH staking limit. Previously, any staking amount exceeding 32 ETH remained idle. If validators want to stake additional ETH, they must set up a brand new validating node and invest an additional 32 ETH. With EIP-7251, validators can stake all their held ETH using a single validating node.
This improvement is expected to attract large institutions to run their own validating nodes and further participate in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Additionally, this proposal, as part of the Pectra upgrade, may also enhance the operational speed of the Ethereum network through the integration of validating nodes. For example, projects like Lido can reduce the number of operating validating nodes and earn rewards on top of the basic staking limit of 32 ETH.
EIP-7002
As part of the Pectra upgrade, EIP-7002 addresses some significant risk issues in the operation of validating nodes.
For example, if you want to earn rewards for running a validating node but don't want to deal with complex operations, you can delegate this task to a validator node operator and hand over the validation keys to them (the validation keys are used for validating and proposing blocks). However, when you want to withdraw ETH, you must use the validation keys to sign a 'voluntary exit message' to complete the operation. If the operator deliberately obstructs and does not sign this message, or if the validation keys are leaked, your ETH may be maliciously withheld or even extorted.
EIP-7002 provides a solution that allows stakers to withdraw ETH simply by extracting their keys. This improvement eliminates the risk of malicious operators refusing to sign exit messages and reduces the likelihood of ETH being withheld due to leaked validation keys.
ERC-7683
In recent years, intents have been one of the hot topics in DeFi. ERC-7683 is a token standard aimed at directly addressing cross-chain interoperability issues and defining 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, co-drafted by Uniswap and Across Protocol. ERC-7683 aims to standardize intents and bring multiple benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem:
Unified Ethereum: Establish a common standard for cross-chain operations across L2 and sidechains, supporting Ethereum's goal as a leading decentralized application platform.
Achieve Interoperability: Standardize order and settlement interfaces to enable seamless cross-chain execution.
Eliminate Fragmentation: Provide a universal framework to coordinate different systems for smoother cross-chain operations.
Enhance User Experience: Provide users with simplified, intuitive, and frictionless cross-chain interactions.
Increase Liquidity: Allow DApps to access cross-chain shared fill networks, providing deeper liquidity.
Accelerate Transactions: Reduce failure rates and speed up transaction times by promoting competition among fillers.
Drive Innovation: Transform 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 messages to or receive messages from other chains.
ERC-7841 abstracts chain-specific logic out of applications, meaning the same application can be deployed across multiple chains without changing how it sends/receives messages.
ERC-7841 serves as a modular foundation that specifies only the information needed for routing messages between applications. This allows specific message types (such as bridging or intent message types) to be flexibly built on a single interface, rather than 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 core objectives, the ongoing heated discussions surrounding ERC-7841 indicate strong momentum in the field of interoperability.
