Buterin Teases a Game-Changing Upgrade That Could Be a 100X Shift

2023-08-03, 08:56

TL; DR

The Ethereum blockchain will soon launch rollups which will increase its capacity.

Larry Fink, BlackRock’s legendary chief utive, has predicted that cryptocurrencies will perform better than traditional currencies.

Account abstraction on Ethereum blockchain will enable users to switch their external wallet addresses to smart contract-based ones.

ETH has failed to break above $2,000 as it is stuck within a channel which is below that price level.

Introduction

For a long time Ethereum scaling challenges have been affecting many investors and users. As such, it has remained a topical issue in the blockchain sector considering that Ethereum is one of the biggest networks at the moment.

Recently, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, hinted on how they plan to solve the ETH’s scaling problem. In this post, we explain what needs to be done for Ethereum to scale by 100X.
Related news: Vitalik Buterin Explains Why You Should Keep Holding Your Bitcoins

Major Cryptocurrencies Record High Prices

The historic SEC vs Ripple ruling that XRP is not a crypto security when traded on crypto exchanges caused the prices of major cryptocurrencies to surge by double digits, showing how resilient the crypto market is.

As an instance, on 15 July the price of XRP increased by 98% to trade at $0.93 while that of Ethereum coin rose by 8%. Also, the value of Bitcoin rose above $31,000. Further, the values of Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Binance Chain coin (BNB) also increased sharply.

Also, recently, BlackRock triggered a price boom of several cryptocurrencies which include ETH and Bitcoin when Larry Fink, BlackRock’s legendary chief utive, admitted that he expects cryptocurrencies to “transcend” fiat currencies like the United States dollar.

In fact, in an interview with CNBC he said, “Importantly, because it’s so international, [crypto is] going to transcend any one currency in currency valuation.”

He added, “More and more of our global investors are asking us about crypto.” He said this while explaining the move by BlackRock to apply for U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Fink further emphasized that BlackRock will do everything possible to democratize investment of other asset classes by means of ETFs. He added, “We are working with our regulators because, as in any new market, if BlackRock’s name is going to be on it, we’re going to make sure that it’s safe and sound and protected.”

In the meantime, groundbreaking developments continue to occur within the crypto space. For instance, recently Buterin spoke about a game-changing upgrade that may result in 100X scaling for the blockchain as well as its account abstraction feature.

Buterin Plans to Introduce Account Abstraction

During 2022’s Ethereum Community Conference in Paris Buterin talked about introducing account abstraction. The best thing about this feature is that there will be no change to the underlying protocol.

With account abstraction, the users will be able to switch their external wallets to smart contract-based ones which enables them to recover their seed phrase easily. In fact, this feature allows each wallet to act like a smart contract which the user can manage.

Account abstraction will come with several advantages such as lower transaction cost enhanced by signatureless transactions. Buterin explained how this will work. He said, “The idea here is if there are these techniques that allow forming many signatures from arbitrary transactions and combining them into one object that is much smaller and can be verified much faster than verifying all account abstraction transactions individually and individually.”

With this feature, users will be able to receive other cryptocurrencies which they can use to pay for transaction fees without converting them to ETH.

X100 Ethereum Blockchain Scalability

Speaking on the Tim Ferris Podcast, Buterin spoke about the possibility of scaling the blockchain by more than 100 times using rollups and shards. Ethereum’s long-term focus is to combine rollups and sharding to create a synergistic effect that will increase the Ethereum network capacity.

However, according to Buterin Ethereum will introduce rollups first. The rollups are secondary scaling solutions which involve processing and storing transaction data on side-chains before bundling them and relaying them to the Ethereum mainnet. The rollups are able to increase the transaction capacity of the network by 100 times.

Buterin also believes that the Ethereum network has the capacity to process between 1,000 and 4,000 transactions per second depending on their nature and sizes. He also hinted that Optimism will introduce its rollups within one month or so.

Further to this, Buterin said that sharding, which involves breaking down large quantities of data into smaller units, will come later and further enhance Ethereum’s transactional performance. With that, the expected Ethereum scaling mechanism should increase Ethereum blockchain’s transaction capacity by 1000X.

ETH Fails to Break Above $2,000

Despite the developments discussed above, ETH is still trading below $2,000. Currently, Ethereum is stuck in the channel between $1,800 and $2,000. However, for a month now, the ETH price has failed to break above $2,000. For the greater part of July ETH has been fluctuating between $1,850 and 1,950.
If ETH breaks above the $1,950 support level it is likely to rise above $2,000. Based on the current selling pressure and the activities of bull whales it is highly unlikely that the Ethereum price will fall below $1,800 in the near future unless there is a strong catalyst for that.

Also, within this period ETH had a low of $1,842 and a high of $1,904. At the time of writing, on 30 July, ETH was trading at $1,876.13, having gained 0.1% within the last 7 days.

Conclusion

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, hinted that the blockchain will have a game-changing ETH upgrade that will increase its transactional capacity by about 100X. Some expected developments include the introduction of rollups and shards. Nevertheless, like the rest of the major cryptocurrencies ETH is bound within a price channel and has failed to break above $2,000.

FAQs About Ethereum

How much does one ETH cost?

The price of Ethereum is currently fluctuating between $1,800 and $2,000. However, it has a potential of surpassing $2,000 by the end of 2023.

How much is Ethereum left?

Ethereum has a current circulating supply of 120,181,083 coins. However, the supply of ETH increases by about 5 coins per every 14 to 15 seconds.

What was the price of ETH at launch?

When ETH was launched in 2015 it had a value of $0.311. Nevertheless, it is currently trading between $1,800 and $2,000.

Author: Mashell C., Gate.io Researcher

*This article represents only the views of the researcher and does not constitute any investment suggestions.

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