Author: Kazu Umemoto, Bankless; Translated by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance

Ethereum is a vibrant network, with a world-class developer network helping it stay ahead.

In 2024, Ethereum made significant progress in its evolution centered around aggregation, introducing blob space through the Dencun upgrade, which helped L2 reduce transaction costs by 10 to 100 times.

Today, let's take a look at some Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and Ethereum Request for Comments (ERCs) that are worth noting this year. Some of these are already planned for the Pectra upgrade, which we cover comprehensively here, while others may be further away but already have some high-profile supporters.

Next, let's take a look at five notable Ethereum upgrades advocated by builders.

EIP-3074

Another of the most anticipated improvements included in the Pectra upgrade is EIP-3074. This upgrade provides a simpler, cheaper, and better user experience for anyone interacting with Ethereum. Users will be able to bundle multiple transactions into one, projects can sponsor users' transactions and pay their gas fees, and there is now a way to recover your wallet in case you lose your private key.

EIP-7251

Validators who hold a large amount of ETH will appreciate EIP-7251 because they can now earn additional rewards from any ETH staked amount exceeding the 32 ETH standard. Previously, any ETH staked amount over 32 ETH was just sitting idle. If validators wanted to stake, they had to set up a completely different validator node and hold an additional 32 ETH. With 7251, they can set up a validator node and stake all the ETH they Hold. It is hoped that this will lead large Institutions to run their own validator nodes and participate more in the ecosystem.

The addition of Pectra can also enhance the speed of the Ethereum network through validator integration. Projects like Lido can now operate fewer validator nodes because they can earn rewards on any ETH staked amount exceeding the basic 32 ETH.

EIP-7002

Pectra includes: suppose you want to earn rewards for running a validator node but do not want to deal with the hassle. You can delegate that responsibility to a validator node operator and provide them with a validator key, which is used for authentication and proposing blocks. At some later point, you may want to withdraw your ETH and perform other operations, but the only way to withdraw ETH is to sign a 'voluntary exit message' using the validator key. If the operator chooses to deceive you by not signing the message or if the validator key is compromised, someone can withhold your ETH for ransom.

With EIP-7002, stakers only need to use the withdrawal key to extract their ETH. This eliminates the risk of malicious operators not signing exit messages or leaking the validator key, thus preventing your ETH from being held for ransom.

ERC-7683

In recent years, intent has been a hot topic in DeFi, and ERC-7683 is a token standard that attempts to address interoperability issues directly and define a shared structure for cross-chain intent, 'just like anyone can create and any solver can implement an order ticket,' as stated on the ERC website.

This standard was first released in 2024 and was written by Uniswap and Across Protocol. With the continued adoption of ERC-7683, we can see significant progress being made in the field of interoperability.

ERC-7841

ERC-7841 is a very young token standard that gained some attention during the holidays for its approach to solving interoperability. This standard proposes a low-level message format and API for applications to read and write messages from other chains. 7841 eliminates any type of chain-specific logic so that applications can seamlessly launch across multiple chains. There are a few other EIPs with similar goals, but the ongoing excitement here indicates strong momentum for interoperability.