Ethereum Foundation Researcher: Ethereum has the opportunity to become the settlement layer of the value internet

On December 1, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake posted on X stating that four years ago today, the Ethereum Beacon Chain was born. In its initial stage, only 500,000 ETH were staked. Although it did not bring direct benefits to users at first, it gradually grew into one of the strongest foundations in blockchain history. Justin Drake stated that many L1 improvements will be gradually released over the next few years; enhancements such as post-quantum security may require a comprehensive redesign. L2 solutions will provide significant performance improvements within a few months, including fast user experience, low fees and unlimited throughput, synchronous composability and more.

Looking forward to the future, Justin Drake believes that Ethereum has the opportunity to become the settlement layer of value internet. Despite imperfections in Beacon Chain still persisting and upgrades for several upcoming years being challenging which include improving audit systems and MEV processing; reducing stake deposits; increasing final determination speed; smart issuance; achieving full-chain verification at smartwatch level and post-quantum security. Meanwhile beyond consensus layer he hopes to achieve complete sharding at data layer and native Rollup implementation at execution layer.