Future Development Directions of the Ethereum Attestation System

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently released a series of articles regarding the future development of the Ethereum protocol, covering six key stages of the Ethereum roadmap. This article will focus on analyzing the first part of the roadmap "The Merge" and explore the potential technical improvements of the attestation ( PoS ) mechanism and its implementation pathways.

Since Ethereum completed the transition from Proof of Work ( PoW ) to Proof of Stake ( PoS ) nearly two years ago, the PoS system has demonstrated excellent stability, performance, and decentralization. However, there are still some important areas that need further optimization.

The development plan for Ethereum in 2023 mainly focuses on two aspects: first, improving technical characteristics such as stability, performance, and accessibility for small validators; second, addressing centralization risks through adjustments in the economic model.

The main goal of "The Merge"

1. Achieve single-slot determinism (SSF): Shorten the block final confirmation time from 15 minutes to within a single slot.

2. Maximize transaction confirmation and completion speed while maintaining decentralization.

3. Lower the threshold for individual staking to enhance the feasibility of participation for small stakers.

4. Enhance overall system robustness.

5. Enhance Ethereum's ability to resist 51% attacks, including preventing finality reversals, blocking, and censorship.

Single Slot Determinism and Staking Democratization

Currently, Ethereum block confirmation takes about 15 minutes, and the staking threshold is 32 ETH. This is a trade-off among three goals:

• Maximize the number of staking participants
• Minimize final confirmation time
• Minimize node operation costs

Ideally, Ethereum aims to achieve two improvements while maintaining economic finality:

1. Shorten the block confirmation time to one time slot (12 seconds or shorter)
2. Reduce the staking threshold from 32 Ether to 1 Ether

These improvements will provide users with higher security guarantees and more convenient participation opportunities. However, achieving these goals faces challenges due to increased node expenses.

Single Slot Deterministic Scheme

To address the issue of node overhead under large-scale validator participation, there are currently several alternative solutions:

1. Optimize the signature aggregation protocol, such as using ZK-SNARKs technology.

2. Orbit Committee Mechanism: By randomly selecting a medium-sized committee to be responsible for the final confirmation of the chain while maintaining a high attack cost.

3. Dual-layer staking mechanism: Set high and low staking thresholds, only high-threshold stakers can directly participate in the economic finality process.

Each solution has its pros and cons, and trade-offs need to be made between security, decentralization, and technical feasibility.

Single Secret Leader Election

Currently, the proposer of the next block can be known in advance, which poses a security risk. The Single Secret Leader Election (SSLE) protocol aims to hide the proposer information using cryptographic techniques, revealing it only when the block is generated. However, achieving a sufficiently simple and effective SSLE protocol still faces challenges.

Faster Transaction Confirmation

Reducing the transaction confirmation time from 12 seconds to 4 seconds will significantly improve the user experience and the efficiency of DeFi protocols. There are mainly two technical routes:

1. Shorten the time gap to 8 seconds or 4 seconds
2. Allow proposers to publish pre-confirmations within a single time slot.

However, shortening the time slot may bring the risk of validator centralization, while the pre-confirmation method is difficult to improve performance in the worst-case scenario.

Quantum Computing Threat Resistance

In the face of potential quantum computing threats, Ethereum needs to develop hash-based or other quantum-resistant alternatives for the current protocol parts that rely on elliptic curves. This is also one of the reasons why Ethereum maintains a conservative approach in its attestation design.

Conclusion

The technical evolution of the Ethereum attestation system faces numerous challenges. To address these challenges, key issues that Ethereum needs to resolve include single-slot finality, staking democratization, single secret leader election, faster transaction confirmations, and the development of alternatives to quantum attack resistance.

During the technological upgrade process, the Ethereum team is continuously exploring and innovating, weighing different technical solutions to find the best development path to achieve higher security, performance, and degree of decentralization.