In October 2024, Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin released a series of articles on the future development of the Ethereum protocol, discussing the progress of the 'Surge' phase and the role of Layer 2 solutions in enhancing scalability and supporting the dApp and DeFi ecosystem.

Ethereum’s “Surge” Roadmap: Tackling the Scalability Challenge

Since its launch in 2015, Ethereum has established itself as the foundation of the blockchain industry with its smart contract platform. However, increased network usage has brought scalability challenges. Vitalik proposed five key phases in Ethereum’s future development: Merge, Surge, Scourge, Purge, and Splurge. The 'Surge' phase, in particular, focuses on increasing network throughput via sharding, a technique that divides the blockchain into smaller parts for parallel processing.

Layer 2 Scaling: The Backbone of Ethereum’s Future

Vitalik highlighted that Layer 2 solutions will be the primary path to Ethereum’s scalability soon. Layer 2 solutions are built on top of Ethereum’s main network (Layer 1) to enable scalability by moving transactions off-chain.

Challenges and Opportunities for Layer 2

While Layer 2 technologies offer substantial potential, they face challenges like technology complexity and interoperability between different Layer 2 solutions. The user experience is also critical, as lower fees and improved speed might still be complex for average users to navigate.

Vitalik Buterin’s «Surge» roadmap paints an optimistic picture of Ethereum’s future. The integration of Layer 2 and sharding technologies will transform Ethereum into a global computing platform, enabling the network to leap to millions of TPS and supporting decentralized application development worldwide.