Ethereum: There are many upgrades after the merger (Surge, Verge, Purge, Splurge)

What is the Ethereum merger and what will happen next?

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his long-term vision and expectations for Ethereum after the merger at the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris in July 2022.

He ended the session by sharing his thoughts on the post-merger Ethereum: “Post-merger, Ethereum is still only about 55% complete.”

This means that after the Ethereum upgrade is merged, there is still 45% of the content to be completed. So what is the remaining 45%?

The Surge, The Verge, The Purge and The Splurge.

The Surge (expected to occur in 2023)

The Surge is the introduction of Ethereum sharding. In short, sharding will split the entire Ethereum network into smaller partitions. There will be a total of 64 shard chains, and each shard will contain its own transaction history, making it possible to complete transactions faster and easier.

This scaling solution aims to further improve the network’s scalability by enabling a cheaper layer 2 blockchain foundation, making it easier for users to operate nodes on Ethereum, which will help ensure network security and reduce the cost of packaging transactions, or rollups.

According to Buterin, “Ethereum today can handle about 15-20 transactions per second. Including rollups, including sharded Ethereum, it will be able to handle 100,000 transactions per second.”

This is 5,000 times faster than current transaction processing speeds.

The Verge

According to Buterin, the implementation of a “Verkle Tree” is “capable of functioning the same as a Merkle Tree: we can put a large amount of data into a Verkle Tree and make a short proof (“witness”) for any single or set of data that is verified by someone who only has the root of the tree.”

“This would reduce proof size by more than 2-30x compared to what Ethereum uses today,” Buterin added.

Ultimately, "Verkle Trees" will allow users to become Ethereum validators without having to store large amounts of data on their devices, which will reduce node size and optimize network storage. The new implementation is another opportunity for Ethereum scalability and decentralization.

The Purge

The name The Purge comes from a 2013 movie. It is about clearing out Ethereum's old network history and bad debts.

The Purge was introduced with the goal of reducing the hard drive space required by Ethereum validators and simplifying the protocol by clearing out old network history, ultimately helping to reduce network congestion.

The Splurge

According to Buterin, The Splurge is “all that other fun stuff.”

This will be a series of smaller upgrades and tweaks designed to ensure the entire Ethereum network runs as smoothly as possible after the 4 previous upgrades (Merge, Surge, Verge, and Purge).

This is certainly not the end.

“The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoin users believe Bitcoin’s integrity is 80%, while Ethereum users believe Ethereum’s integrity is 40%.” — Vitalik Buterin