Vitalik Buterin has just updated his plans for the Ethereum Blockchain after the Dencun Upgrade. One of those updates was the re-introduction of EIP-4444 and EIP-6780 which are going to be implemented in The Purge Upgrade.
There will be two changes with the introduction of these Ethereum Improvement Proposals which will alter the SelfDestruct Function and change the way full nodes store data on the blockchain.
Introduction of EIP-4444 and EIP-6780
Ethereum Improvement Proposals or EIPs are proposals made by the core developers of the Ethereum Blockchain to inform the Ethereum community about upcoming upgrades that are going to be implemented.
Currently, the focus has shifted from the EIP-4844 to the EIP-6780 and the EIP-4444 after the Dencun Upgrade was implemented.
The two EIPs became popular again after Vitalik Buterin, the Co-Founder of Ethereum, tweeted about it in a thread, explaining what is next for Ethereum after the Dencun Upgrade.
One of the plans that was talked about was The purge upgrade which will implement the two EIPs to improve the two aspects of the blockchain from a node and developer point of view, which are scalability and decentralization.
Source: EIP-6780
The current popular EIP is the EIP-6780 as it has just been updated around 20 hours since the time this article was published.
However, The EIP itself was created and published on March 25th, 2023, as part of the Dencun Upgrade.
Vitalik Buterin took to Twitter to mention that the implementation of this EIP will be upgraded even further after the success of the EIP-4844.
The EIP will complement the EIP-4444 which essentially will increase the capabilities of the Ethereum Blockchain overall.
Source: EIP-4444
The EIP-4444 is a relatively old EIP that was created in 2021 but resurfaced after Vitalik Buterin repurposed it for The Purge Upgrade.
Changes from EIP-4444
Through the EIP-6780 and the EIP-4444, the focus of The Purge will be on increasing the scalability aspect of Ethereum as well as the decentralization aspect.
EIP-4444 will introduce the purging of old data, which is why it is called The Purge. This means that full nodes are no longer required to store data that is more than one year old—essentially creating more storage space for the full nodes.
The implementation of this upgrade will give benefits to nodes or validators as well as users and developers.
For nodes, there will be cheaper requirements to be a full node on the Ethereum Blockchain because less storage space is needed.
For users and developers, the transaction cost will decrease because there are fewer costs on the storage side of the nodes.
Questions start to arise when talking about erasing historical data, where this means that old data will not be available on the blockchain, tampering with the value of immutability on a blockchain.
However, this might not be the case as Vitalik stated the older data will be stored by light nodes, essentially lowering the cost and distributing the data into a significant amount of nodes, making the blockchain more decentralized.
Changes from EIP-6780
Currently, The EIP-4444 is still being developed, as the focus lies on the EIP-6780, which is considered more possible to be directly implemented due to the Dencun Upgrade.
This proposal will alter the way SelfDestruct functions for developers on the Ethereum Blockchain, but moving ahead, Vitalik Buterin wants this function to be erased.
The reason behind this is that the SelfDestruct function creates dead smart contracts which can pile up and become “garbage” on the storage space of the full nodes.
This means that those nodes need to maintain storage to store the “garbage” which makes the storing process inefficient.
Since there are already more efficient alternatives to this function, Vitalik Buterin wants to eliminate the SelfDestruct function so there are fewer useless smart contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain.
Conclusion
Overall, the EIP-4444 will erase useless smart contracts and the EIP-6780 will stop developers from adding new useless smart contracts on the Ethereum Blockchain.
It will be interesting to see how the upgrade will be done, but sadly there is no specific timeline yet for these.
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