ETHEREUM ROADMAP FOR DUMMIES

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

Ethereum has a credible path to achieving 10,000 transactions per second on its base layer by switching validators from re-executing transactions to simply verifying zero-knowledge proofs, with gas limits increasing multiple times annually and the ecosystem targeting 10 million TPS within 10 years through horizontal scaling across L2s. The breakthrough comes from ZK-proofs solving the blockchain trilemma by enabling mathematical verification of complex transactions without revealing their contents, allowing even a $7 Raspberry Pi Pico to validate proofs instead of requiring expensive hardware like other chains. The transition involves gradually implementing zkEVM technology across Ethereum's five major software clients, with real-time proving requiring blocks to be proven in under 12 seconds using hardware costing under $100,000 and consuming less than 10 kilowatts of electricity. The roadmap includes establishing "native rollups" that would use Ethereum's L1 validators to verify L2 state transitions, making storage on these rollups as secure as the base layer itself.