Ethereum's Dencun Hard Fork Introduces Blobs, Vitalik Buterin Outlines Future Scaling Plans

According to CryptoPotato, Ethereum has introduced blobs through its latest Dencun hard fork, making transactions on the network's layer 2 (L2) blockchains significantly cheaper. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discussed the future of Ethereum scaling and the shift in developmental focus to L2s in a recent blog post. Vitalik stated that the newly implemented EIP 4844, also known as blobs, marked a major milestone for Ethereum scaling, with all remaining scaling improvements being incremental in comparison. The upgrade creates dedicated data availability space, or blobspace, on Ethereum's base layer, allowing layer 2 networks to post batched transactions at a much lower cost. Networks such as Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism are expected to benefit from the upgrade. One of Ethereum's next goals may be to implement data availability sampling, a more efficient method for verifying blobs that could significantly increase the network's blobspace. This would allow blobs to process approximately 1.33 megabytes of data per second. Vitalik also emphasized the need to increase blob capacity and improve existing L2s, both of which require minimal hard fork involvement. To enhance L2s, he suggested reducing transaction sizes using data compression, using L1s for security more sparingly, scaling rollups internally, and promoting decentralization with L2s whose code can only be modified by security councils under rare circumstances. With the introduction of blobs and the increasing adoption of L2s, Vitalik urged developers to create protocols that meet the standards of the current decade. He remains a proponent of developing more advanced features on Ethereum's base layer to enable greater simplicity and reduce bug risk on layer 2 networks. In recent weeks, Vitalik has proposed multiple ways to help decentralize Ethereum staking away from large staking providers, including creating new, more accessible tiers of staking through rainbow staking and imposing harsher financial penalties on staking whales.