Ethereum Researcher Sparks Speculation Over Scalability Solution

According to Cointelegraph, a recent social media post by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has ignited discussions about a potential solution to the scalability challenges faced by the layer-1 blockchain. On November 11, Drake announced on X that he plans to unveil an 'ambitious' initiative for Ethereum. He hinted at a 'from-scratch' redesign of the Ethereum consensus layer, which many interpret as a move towards addressing its scalability issues. Drake aims to propose a strategy for a Beacon Chain roadmap, with the proposal expected to be shared at Devcon in Bangkok, Thailand, on November 12. Following Drake's announcement, speculation about an ETH 3.0 upgrade has been rife within the Ethereum community. Doug Colkitt, founder of Ambient Finance, mentioned on X that there are rumors of an ETH 3.0 announcement involving a 'second merge into a new consensus targeting 1-second block times' and a native zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM). Colkitt believes that if these rumors are true, a native zkEVM would represent a significant update, potentially eliminating the gas limit entirely. This would allow builders to create arbitrarily large blocks, as nodes would only need to verify the snark, leaving bandwidth as the sole scaling limit. Colkitt expressed optimism that a zkEVM could lead to arbitrary scalability and reduce the need for layer-2 rollups. However, not everyone in the community is convinced by the ETH 3.0 speculation. Some members argue that such significant updates would have been signaled months in advance, with related Ethereum Improvement Proposals likely filed if an update were imminent. In an interview with Cointelegraph's Andrew Fenton, Consensys CEO Joe Lubin discussed potential solutions for Ethereum's scalability. Lubin suggested revisiting the concept of execution sharding, potentially using a zkEVM at layer-1 to create identical execution shards. He noted that this approach wasn't feasible a few years ago when the idea of execution sharding was discarded. However, recent developments in zero-knowledge and optimistic approaches could be integrated into Ethereum's layer-1 to enhance scalability. Lubin is optimistic that these strategies could enable Ethereum to handle millions of transactions per second, although he acknowledged that full implementation could take several years. He explained that by condensing a large amount of computation at different layers into a single transaction, Ethereum could achieve a high transaction throughput. Despite the potential, Lubin emphasized that realizing these scalability solutions would require time and continued development efforts.