Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently shared important insights on Ethereum's future technical roadmap via social media, proposing that the network will continue to deepen its "targeted scaling strategy" rather than adopting a crude resource expansion approach. The core of this technical concept lies in using a refined economic model design to enhance the network's overall throughput while more effectively guiding resources toward efficient application scenarios.
According to Vitalik's vision, Ethereum might increase the block gas limit to five times its current level in the future, which would undoubtedly significantly enhance the network's transaction processing capacity. However, in stark contrast, the gas costs for certain specific types of on-chain operations—especially those with high computational complexity or substantial resource consumption—might be simultaneously increased, potentially also by a factor of five. This differentiated pricing strategy of "raising some, lowering others" represents a significant shift for Ethereum from a "one-size-fits-all" resource pricing model towards "refined regulation."
At the implementation level, Vitalik pointed out several operation types that might be key adjustment targets: SSTORE operations when creating new storage, various precompiled operations (excluding those related to elliptic curves), calls to large contracts, and operations involving complex arithmetic calculations. These operations might not fully reflect their true costs under the current gas pricing system, either because they occupy large amounts of state storage or require intensive computational resources. Simultaneously, the cost structure of Calldata might also undergo fine-tuning to better balance data availability and resource consumption.
Notably, Vitalik specifically mentioned that the Ethereum block gas limit has already doubled from 30M to 60M over the past year. However, he emphasized that this is merely the starting point for the network's scaling journey. This gradual scaling approach avoids the stability risks associated with aggressive upgrades while laying the groundwork for more refined resource management in the future.
Currently, the Ethereum core development team has begun advancing related gas repricing proposals. These proposals will take the form of EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) in preparation for the upcoming "Glamsterdam" or "H*" upgrades. The discussion and refinement of these technical details mark Ethereum's progression from a "functional" stage towards a "highly usable" one.
Behind this series of adjustments lies Ethereum's deep reflection on long-term scalability. By establishing a more precise resource pricing mechanism, the network can not only better resist resource abuse and spam transaction attacks but also guide developers to optimize smart contract design and encourage more efficient DApp development models. This development approach, which emphasizes both "quality" and "quantity," may help Ethereum steadily enhance its core competitiveness as a global decentralized application platform while maintaining its decentralized characteristics.
