Big Plans: Why Ethereum's Roadmap Was Drastically Reworked

Ethereum did not start as a conservative idea. It was a rebellious one, and it loudly proclaimed as much.

Bitcoin had demonstrated the ability to take financial institutions out of the equation, but Ethereum was about to take this philosophy even further. It was not enough to have digital gold; Ethereum wanted digital contracts, organizations, markets, identities, everything. The early rallying cries were not about how much it would optimize the throughput of financial applications; they were about creating an alternative paradigm for the internet at large, one that had an institutional layer written in code.

That is why it attracted a different class of people than Bitcoin. Bitcoiners tended to sound like apocalyptic monetary historians. Ethereum was populated by settlers: people who had discovered an empty land and had promptly started discussing zoning laws before any buildings had been erected. Everyone was excited, reckless, arrogant, occasionally deluded - but most importantly, alive.

The original dream was easy to believe in. It did not have to answer to anything yet, because everyone who had joined Ethereum’s early development had joined it willingly. A world computer sounded fantastic before it had to serve millions of users at once.

Original Dream Was Too Human

The original Ethereum vision did not center around gas prices and validator committees. It focused on humanity’s dissatisfaction with their reality, and the opportunities that a publicly available platform of generic programmability would give to remove institutional control from day-to-day life.

Users wanted to write contracts that would be immune to the discretion of lawyers. They wanted money markets that would be inaccessible to banks. They wanted organizations to exist as mathematical concepts, impossible to dissolve at the whim of a CEO. They wanted virtual goods to be truly virtual, unable to be seized or devalued by their hosting company. They wanted finance to be available on weekends. They wanted everything to be expressed in terms that normal humans could understand, not in the convoluted regulatory legalese designed to hide economic realities behind layers of corporate obfuscation.

It is not hard to understand this desire, and where it came from. People had seen systems extract productivity, wealth, and power from their users, and promised to never do so themselves. But these promises always came with conditions: users would have to read the fine print, or accept certain limitations, or only use the service in designated ways, or suffer the consequences of a ‘disruptive’ new paradigm.

Human nature was inconvenient. People tend to do the opposite of what they are told, and nowhere was this tendency stronger than in Ethereum’s early adopters. They would speculate, panic, create value, destroy, mint NFTs, hold on to them obsessively, engage in memetic rituals, pay for everything in ether, then complain when the value dropped, and demand refunds for irreversible transactions. They wanted decentralization, until it meant paying blood money in gas. They wanted sovereignty, until it was a permissionless smart contract.

Ethereum’s roadmap was changed drastically because the initial design did not take into account that human nature would not be changed. It assumed a certain technical capability, and a certain level of technical literacy from its users. The market delivered the former, but not the latter. Ethereum’s developers saw the world as a group of sovereign agents, but the world delivered a mix of impatient speculators, NFT tourists, yield farmers, memecoin enthusiasts, builders, scam artists, and everyday users who just wanted things to work.

There was no shame in making this mistake; it is the same one that has been made by every young ecosystem throughout history. The delusion was in the assumption that proper theoretical foundation would be sufficient as a foundation.

Fees Were Public Shame

Nothing was more embarrassing to Ethereum’s self-perception than the narrative surrounding gas prices.

High gas prices were more than just an inconvenience; they were an existential insult. They represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the ethos of the platform and its early ideals. No one wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that an open platform of programmable money provided; everyone wanted to pay blood money every time they used it. A struggling individual might have accepted this state of affairs without questioning it, but Ethereum’s ideals were incompatible with this perspective. It was impossible to believe in Ethereum as a project that made moral judgements about its users’ economic decisions and simultaneously placed itself in the position of an undeserving monopolist.

Ethereum did not want to be a settlement layer for the oligarchs of the cryptocurrency space while being unaffordable to everyone else. It wanted to maintain its moral credibility with the masses while keeping its status as a desirable playground for the elite. These goals were impossible to achieve at the same time, and the technical realization of Ethereum’s roadmap was an attempt to achieve both, by convincing the public that gas was a necessary evil. The theory was that Ethereum would grow into a serious financial infrastructure, and that its security properties and settlement finality would be worth the entry cost. Meanwhile, the L2 scaling solutions would be used by the tourists, and the real users would pay higher gas fees to use them. The problem with this theory was that it did not take human nature into account.

Ethereum’s gas pricing structure punished its users for their enthusiasm. As a result, the early adopters were frustrated and angry, but this anger was misplaced. The real reason why gas prices were such a problem was that Ethereum had failed to realize just how important the tokenomics of the platform really were. Ethereum’s roadmap was changed not because of an explicit desire to make the platform more accessible, but simply because the initial assumptions turned out to be wrong. It was naïve to assume that Ethereum could ignore the technical literacy of its users and expect to retain those users without upsetting them. The original Ethereum roadmap made the mistake of believing that its technical design was its user interface, and did not consider the possibility that its user interface was its technical design.

This is the lesson behind EIP-4844: that Ethereum had to stop pretending that its gas prices and UX were not user-hostile, and admit that its scalability plans were years behind where they needed to be to accommodate the demand. The roadmap for sharding had long been considered a technical ideal by many in the Ethereum community, but there was also a practical reason why it had to be abandoned: the human factor.

Execution sharding was an impractical idea both from a technical and a human perspective. It was not enough to simply build a system that functioned well at scale; it also had to be intuitive enough for ordinary users to want to use at the same time. This dual challenge was made even more difficult by the introduction of rollups. They threatened to make execution sharding unnecessary, but in doing so, they undermined Ethereum’s roadmap by presenting an alternative that was easier to understand, easier to adopt, and therefore more desirable. As a consequence, sharding lost much of its appeal, and Ethereum had to acknowledge that it was right to be disappointed with the technical assumptions that had guided it up to that point.

It had to accept that the idea of the world computer was too abstract, and that its user experience needed to change.

Cardano Mindset Stopped Looking Ridiculous

For a long time, Ethereum was happy to ridicule Cardano and its supporters. Cardano talked about the importance of thorough research and careful planning before launching any new solutions. This approach made many Ethereum developers roll their eyes at the Cardano roadmap. After all, wasn’t Ethereum doing just fine without this careful conservatism? What did Cardano have to say about all the real problems that Ethereum had actually faced?

The joke was not unreasonable, because Ethereum really did have a track record of delivering results to the crypto economy without wasting too much time on philosophical positioning. But one day, this began to change. Ethereum’s roadmap began to resemble the one it had once mocked. New ideas no longer seemed as exciting as they once had, and Ethereum began to realize that its aggressive, chaotic development practices were unsustainable in the long run. It had grown beyond the point where a scrappy startup mentality was enough to get it through the early years. Ethereum had to grow up, just as Cardano had predicted.

The easiest way to see this shift was to look at the development of the Merge. It was obvious that Ethereum had to make the transition from PoW to PoS one day, but it was also clear that this transition could not happen overnight, no matter how much everyone wanted it to. It took multiple clients, testnets, and months of careful planning to make it happen. In other words, it took a Cardano mindset to get Ethereum to this point. That does not mean that Ethereum has fundamentally changed its philosophy, but it has begun to understand why conservatism has value, and where it is most needed. There is nothing wrong with wanting to push boundaries and take risks, but Ethereum has begun to realize that sometimes, pushing and risking can get in the way of long-term vision.

This does not mean that Ethereum is no longer Ethereum. It still has that chaotic edge to it, which differentiates it from the rest. But now, it has the luxury of having other options to rely on. The formal math, once a subject of ridicule, now has a security property that Ethereum can leverage. Client diversity stops being an abstract research topic and starts being a practical concern. Data availability, statelessness, censorship resistance, different kinds of proofs – these are no longer purely theoretical ideas, but rather, practical necessities. The roadmap reflects this change in priorities. The developers working on the Ethereum ecosystem are now, slowly but surely, adopting best practices from the Cardano blockchain while retaining Ethereum’s scrappiness.

While not easy to quantify, the security requirements for Ethereum are no less important than its flexibility and speed, which is why the roadmap has to work on satisfying all of the above.

The users who care to quantify such benefits would rarely criticize the conservatism of the Ethereum Foundation, as they were the ones to demand cheaper and more accessible tools, which Ethereum had an undeniable advantage in providing over the competition. However, there was a segment of the Ethereum user base that desired deeper technical knowledge and a more substantial assurance of the security Ethereum promised, albeit at a higher cost.

This created a dilemma best suited for the settlement layer: provide these features, and Ethereum ceases to be an accessible and convenient financial tool for the everyday person or entity; deny them, and Ethereum fails its users who care to understand the product it provides. It had to provide these features, as none of its native users and developers could ignore their demands. Yet, it had to ignore them, as Ethereum would become significantly more difficult to use by others, especially in comparison to permissionless chains. Where does it stop being a financial instrument for everyone and start being an elitist instrument for the crypto oligarchy?

This is the conundrum that Ethereum’s settlement-layer security and flexibility have to solve, which is why the roadmap has to include finding ways to satisfy all users.

There is a psychological aspect to this kind of dilemma, as young protocols have to prioritize flexibility to grow, whereas older ones seek security to survive. In this particular case, however, the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, as the roadmap shows the convergence of the two. The more Ethereum grows and becomes more prominent, the more it begins to rely on the strengths of the protocols it inspired. It is this kind of understanding that fuels the roadmap.

Ethereum no longer regards itself as the wild west, but it is also aware that branding itself as a serious settlement layer is not an appealing strategy either. It has to provide convenience while being decentralized.

Rollups Solved Pain and Created Politics

The rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap was, in all honesty, an obvious conclusion to the gas price war. It was a sensible decision to delegate most aspects of computation to other chains while focusing on what distinguished Ethereum from its competitors. It was a pragmatic choice that prioritized Ethereum’s strengths and sought to provide its users with the services they demanded most. There was no point in trying to scale Ethereum as a settlement layer when there was an obvious alternative to embracing the multi-chain future and allowing other protocols to compete for Ethereum’s users by providing rollups of their own.

However, Ethereum failed to consider that such a solution would create privileged entities that existed between itself and its users. There was no theoretical issue with this state of affairs, but in practice, it resulted in multiple rollup-specific narratives that disregarded Ethereum’s values and threatened to fracture the Ethereum ecosystem.

In many ways, this was an inevitable outcome, the main explanation for which lies in Ethereum’s ethos and early ideals. Ethereum has always favored decentralization, which means that the default option for every Ethereum developer was to operate as a trusted third-party entity. Subsequently, the invention of rollups was seen as an obvious innovation that expanded Ethereum’s transaction capacity in a trustless manner, as there was no fundamental difference between them and Ethereum’s own infrastructure. In practice, however, the majority of rollups functioned and continue to function as their own blockchains, with their own users, developers, and politics.

The rise of rollups has created a set of dynamics that are, for the most part, detrimental to the Ethereum ecosystem. They are unquestionably beneficial for the platform’s growth, but at the cost of introducing direct competition to other settlement layers. This, in turn, creates additional pressures for Ethereum to either embrace a similar approach to scaling or to adapt its existing solutions to satisfy rollup-specific demands. It has to negotiate its politics very carefully, as Ethereum has to remain decentralized while not threatening the practical appeal of its L2s. It has to acknowledge the desires of other protocols to build their own settlements while providing the infrastructure that allows these protocols to operate without any compromises.

As a result, the roadmap is not focused on decentralization as much as one might expect. It recognizes the advantages of such an approach, but it also understands that it is not Ethereum’s only important value. At least not at this point in its development. Ethereum has to compromise between being a settlement layer for decentralized applications and a convenient platform for regular users.

Current Roadmap Is a Compromise With Reality

The current Ethereum roadmap is, quite obviously, brimming with grandiose concepts and equally ambitious promises to deliver on these concepts within a reasonable timeframe. However, for all its talk about the Surge, the Scourge, the Verge, the Purge, the Splurge, and Ethereum’s potential to become significantly more scalable and accessible, the roadmap is a compromise with reality. It is not as simplistic as one might expect, as the realities of the cryptocurrency space rarely allow one to operate purely theoretically. The most recent upgrades to Ethereum were, in many ways, the results of these compromises. In practice, the roadmap largely revolves around Pectra, which updates the Ethereum wallet and validator stack, and prepares the Ethereum ecosystem for a rollup-centric future. Fusaka focuses on bringing additional practical improvements to Ethereum, including the much-needed PeerDAS availability. Glamsterdam will be necessary to truly scale Ethereum into the future, as it will introduce an enshrined proposer-builder separation, blob transaction data availability, and access lists. These upgrades will play into Ethereum’s focus on L1 and blobs as the primary scalability solution while also facilitating further exploration of the Ethereum ecosystem. The whimsical names of the upgrades obscure the fundamental changes taking place in the Ethereum ecosystem. The roadmap is no longer focused on blindly rushing into the unknown but rather on securing and scaling Ethereum in a pragmatic manner for the long-term future.

The roadmap was selected for similar reasons, as Ethereum has to continuously operate under the pressures created by the need to facilitate further development and upgrades to the Ethereum ecosystem while also considering the demands of its users and stakers. It is this kind of conundrum that makes the roadmap such a challenging exercise. The improvements necessary to truly scale Ethereum will be incompatible with the idea of making sure that everything remains conveniently available for everyone, as the separation between Ethereum and rollups will lead to increased competition for users and computational resources. Ethereum has to acknowledge the needs of ETH stakers, which means constantly adjusting the balance between Ethereum and rollups to ensure the security of the platform. However, Ethereum also has to remain committed to its philosophy, which means that it has to facilitate the ability of other protocols to do the same. It is a delicate balance to strike, but one that Ethereum has been striving to achieve with every upgrade to the Ethereum ecosystem.

There are additional tensions between the roadmap and the current Ethereum philosophy, most of which stem from the need to focus on large-scale upgrades to Ethereum. The state of the Ethereum ecosystem, while convenient in some respects, is undeniably complicated, making it ill-suited for rapid development. The rollup-centric approach, while beneficial for Ethereum’s future, has so far failed to deliver on its promises and has consumed numerous resources in the process. Ethereum’s roadmap is rife with requirements that contradict one another, most of which are detrimental to its long-term viability. And finally, it has to acknowledge the reality that neither its Ethereum-based users nor its rollups-based users are truly satisfied with the current state of Ethereum. These requirements threaten to destabilize Ethereum’s user base, as the more it continues to grow, the more its users and developers begin to feel as if Ethereum has outgrown itself. Fortunately for the Ethereum Foundation, the roadmap has taken them into account, as it will allow the Ethereum ecosystem to grow into something significantly bigger while also evolving for the better.

Is It Feasible?

Ethereum’s roadmap is realistic, like an airport renovation project carried out while the airport remains open for business. It will get the job done, albeit in a manner that can be described as anything but elegant.

The optimism surrounding Ethereum’s future prospects is well-deserved, given the successes it has seen in the past, as well as its ability to overcome the challenges it encountered. Ethereum has been able to build a vibrant and competitive cryptocurrency ecosystem that attracts the most promising minds in the industry. Its ideals of decentralization and innovation have been turned into a practical reality, and continue to provide inspiration for years to come. In short, Ethereum has a proven track record when it comes to getting things done, which means that the roadmap has a good chance of being realized.

On the other hand, there are numerous reasons why the roadmap should be regarded as little more than an ambitious vision. Ethereum’s technical complexity and lack of flexibility have hindered its development, and the state of Ethereum is complicated enough that further rapid upgrades may no longer be a viable option. The rollup-centric future that Ethereum has embraced involves significant risks and has so far been rather disappointing in terms of results. The roadmap is filled with requirements that contradict one another, which in turn makes these requirements nearly impossible to satisfy simultaneously. Finally, it has to realize the limitations of its own approach to growth and development. Ethereum has grown too large, too popular, and too close to its users to change the way it has always changed, namely, very slowly. The most obvious reason why the roadmap should be regarded as a stretch goal stems from its competition with other blockchains. The attempts to turn Ethereum into the most competitive settlement layer has so far proven to be an elusive goal, one that has resulted in numerous failures that continue to undermine Ethereum’s efforts to promote itself as the superior option. It will take significantly more time and effort to ensure that Ethereum remains the preferred settlement layer for as long as it wants it to, which is why the roadmap should be regarded as more of an aspiration than a realistic goal.

In practice, Ethereum’s roadmap will most likely fall somewhere between the two, as it will be up to every user to decide for themselves whether the benefits of the changes Ethereum proposes outweigh the costs. The main strength of Ethereum’s roadmap lies in its ability to evolve while also becoming increasingly competitive. In other words, the roadmap will be realistic and achievable, but not in the way one might expect it to be.

Ethereum’s approach to growth and development will remain pragmatic, which is why it will continue to evolve and update itself at a steady pace. However, this strategy also means that Ethereum has to carefully balance between addressing the requirements of its stakers, its users, and its developers. It has to ensure that Ethereum’s infrastructure supports the rapid advancement of its ecosystem without threatening the sustainability of each individual aspect of the Ethereum platform. It will become significantly more efficient, more competitive, and more valuable in the long-term future, but not at the expense of its users. This is the main lesson that the current roadmap has learned from its predecessors, and the one it will teach future roadmaps in the years to come.

Ethereum has had to update and renew its approach to development several times in the past, and it will do so again in the future. It has to admit, even if only in private, that there are limits to its own capabilities. It has to understand that the success of the Ethereum platform depends on the performance of individual protocols, including those that directly compete with one another and with Ethereum itself.

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