Key to Ethereum's Future in the Next Five Years: L1 Scaling

Ethereum is refocusing on the L1 scaling path. After achieving phased results in the L2 ecosystem, Ethereum recognizes the need to make L1 lighter, stronger, and more unified. This article will explore how the Ethereum L1 plan aims to achieve the next round of large-scale expansion.

Return from L2 to L1

Since 2020, Rollup has become the core strategy for Ethereum's scalability, giving rise to numerous L2 projects. However, this has also led to an increasing fragmentation of transactions and value across different L2s, while placing a heavier burden on L1 as the data availability and final settlement layer.

Layer 1 is facing increasing operational pressures, including a higher burden on nodes due to increased Gas transactions, the expansion of state space affecting synchronization efficiency, and exacerbated fluctuations in block packing time.

Currently, Ethereum is at a turning point in the differentiation from L2 back to L1 reconstruction. This means that future asset transfers, state sharing, and application switching across L1/L2 should be smoother and more seamless.

EIP-7987 and zkEVM: The Core Solutions for L1 Scalability

EIP-7987: Limit the Gas limit for a single transaction

The EIP-7987 proposal suggests setting the Gas limit for a single transaction at 16.77 million. This aims to prevent single high Gas operations from occupying too many block resources, affecting node validation and synchronization. Meanwhile, Ethereum is gradually increasing the block Gas limit, which has now reached 37.3 million.

L1 zkEVM: Reconstructing Execution Architecture

zkEVM is regarded as one of the "final solutions" for scaling Ethereum. It will enable the Ethereum mainnet to support ZK circuit verification, allowing each block's execution to generate verifiable zero-knowledge proofs. This will significantly reduce the burden on nodes and enhance security and tamper resistance.

The Ethereum Foundation has released the L1 zkEVM real-time proof standard, planning to go live within a year. This will enable the Ethereum mainnet to become a self-verifying execution platform, promising a performance improvement of 10-100 times.

Other L1 Scaling Measures

In addition to EIP-7987 and zkEVM, Ethereum is also advancing L1 scaling in multiple areas:

1. ePBS architecture optimization: Separating the roles of block proposer and block builder to address issues such as MEV extraction imbalance.

2. FOCIL Integration: Allows light nodes to verify blocks and transactions without maintaining the full state.

3. Stateless client architecture: Reducing node dependency on the full chain state through the witness mechanism.

4. Multi-dimensional resource pricing: Explore setting independent price curves for different resource types.

Conclusion

The evolution of L1 is equally important as the development of L2. L2 carries more users and execution space, while L1 provides unified settlement, security foundation, and resource governance. Only through the co-evolution of L1 and L2 can Ethereum become a truly global Web3 value network.