Vitalik Buterin Shares Updated Ethereum Roadmap Featuring “The Scourge”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared an updated roadmap detailing how the leading smart contract blockchain will scale to serve mainstream use cases.

The new diagram is an improved version of Ethereum’s five-phase approach to scalability and includes “more concrete milestones.” according to the co-founder. One notable change to the diagram is the addition of a sixth phase called “The Scourge.”

Updated roadmap diagram! pic.twitter.com/MT9BKgYcJH

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 4, 2022

Vitalik Unveils Updated Ethereum Roadmap

The newly updated Ethereum roadmap details six phases to improve network performance and scalability: The Merge, the Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. It’s important to note that the Ethereum network began its Merge phase in September after it merged the former Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain with a newly built Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network.

The Ethereum developer ecosystem will next tackle the second upgrade phase — The Surge — expected to lead to a surge in the network’s performance. Instead of a limited number of around 20 transactions per second (TPS), the Ethereum network could scale up to 100,000 TPS at the end of this phase.

Next comes “The Scourge,” a new addition to Ethereum’s scalability roadmap. According to Vitalik Buterin, this phase will “ensure reliable and fairly credibly neutral transaction inclusion,” and potentially solve the long-known miner-extractable value (MEV) facing Ethereum.

Ethereum’s MEV issues involve the use of bots to sandwich and exploit transactions on the network, and often lead to congestion and high network fees. The developer community will now dedicate a phase of the network’s upgrade to tackle the challenge.

Meanwhile, the fourth phase — The Verge — will now focus on making the process of block verification easier on the Ethereum mainnet and other scalability solutions. Lastly, “The Purge” and “The Splurge” will revolve around optimizations for existing infrastructure and ultimately finalize Ethereum’s push to be mainstream-ready.