Significant Changes Coming to Ethereum
- EIP-152: Add Blake2 compression function F precompile
- EIP-1108: Reduce alt_bn128 precompile gas costs
- EIP-1344: Add ChainID opcode
- EIP-2028: Calldata gas cost reduction
- EIP-1884: Repricing for trie-size-dependent opcodes
- EIP-2200: Rebalance net-metered SSTORE gas cost with consideration of SLOAD gas cost change
- EIP-663: Unlimited SWAP and DUP instructions
- EIP-1057: ProgPoW, a Programmatic Proof-of-Work (pending audit, above and beyond standard security considerations, that should be evaluated prior to inclusion).
- EIP-1380: Reduced gas cost for call to self
- EIP-1702: Generalized account versioning scheme
- EIP-1962: EC arithmetic and pairings with runtime definitions (replaces EIP-1829)
- EIP-1985: Sane limits for certain EVM parametersEIP-2045: Particle gas costs for EVM opcodes
- EIP-2046: Reduced gas cost for static calls made to precompiles
Controversy Surrounding ProgPOW
A few days ago during a core developers meeting, perhaps under the pressure of the massive Ethereum mining community, they had a very interesting discussion regarding this issue. “Mr Else” pointed out that the current ASICs for Ethash are only “marginally” better than a normal GPU?—?but the next generation of the ASICs will be about “2x better than GPUs.” They continue to call this a “slow arms race” between the GPU manufacturers and ASIC companies. In the end the decision was made that ProgPOW will be implemented in the future as long as there is nothing critical found in the largely untested algorithm. However, that could take precious months to implement, not to mention the logistical headaches and resources it would take for the network to hold another hardfork.The implementation of ProgPOW may ultimately be a moot point if it takes too long. The 3–4 month timetable of its implementation is optimistic at best. The network would also be taking a step back, as ProgPOW’s confirmation times take 1.5 to 2 times longer than Ethash. Instead, there should be an immense pressure to implement PoS as soon as possible before the new ASIC miners begin to accumulate a disproportionate amount of Ethereum, rendering PoS more centralized than desired from the get-go.