A brief analysis of the “streamlined consensus” roadmap: How can Ethereum use specialized tracks to overcome the dilemma of generalization?

After taking a quick look at the Ethereum Streamlined Consensus Roadmap, I found that it has indeed begun to gain momentum as Vitalik Buterin said.

Let me share the highlights I saw:

1) Ethereum's past iterations have been patchwork, resulting in a significant accumulation of technical debt. However, this roadmap at least indicates that Ethereum is truly starting over, reminiscent of its initial transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Even BLS elliptic curve signatures have been abandoned in favor of hash signatures. While BLS was instrumental in enabling the Beacon Chain, it has become the biggest cost and efficiency obstacle to full ZK adoption. The goal is to make Ethereum a truly ZK-native chain.

2) Six zkVM technology paths are being explored simultaneously, not for general computing but to optimize the single scenario of "signature aggregation." SP1 (Succinct), OpenVM general-purpose customized solutions, and specialized solutions like Binius and Hashcaster are all being advanced simultaneously. This effectively introduces a zkVM horse race mechanism, aiming to maximize the performance of Ethereum's zkVM. I noticed, however, that RiscZero, the original zkVM, seems to be absent. Upon closer inspection, this makes sense: RiscZero serves the larger generalized zkVM market, while Ethereum only needs to focus on customized signature aggregation. Given its broader scope, it doesn't bother with specialized optimizations.

3) The staking threshold has been reduced from 32 ETH to 1 ETH, and block times have been reduced from 12 seconds to 4 seconds. These performance improvements are a direct result of the hash signature and zkVM upgrades, further enhancing Ethereum's Layer 1 performance. However, this raises a question: what is the value of general-purpose Layer 2s that are simply cheaper and more efficient? There is only one path forward for them: switching to Specfic-Chains (gaming chains, payment chains?), or models like Based Rollup, which will become mainstream. After all, with improved Layer 1 performance, it makes more sense to transfer the Sequencer to Layer 1.

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Overall, I feel that Ethereum's streamlined consensus roadmap is similar to Solana's recent Alpenglow and Firedancer upgrades: both are essentially achieving performance leaps through streamlined consensus. However, Ethereum's accumulated technical debt is still too heavy, and it will take at least another 4-5 years of restructuring.