TL;DR
- The Ethereum Foundation will focus its development on interoperability to unify protocols and enhance user experience across the network.
- It will organize the work into three streams: initialization with standards, acceleration of operations, and refinement of the base layer.
- It will improve crosschain infrastructure and standards to increase speed, uniformity, and efficiency between layer-2 and layer-1.
The Ethereum Foundation has identified interoperability as its top immediate priority, focusing on improving user experience over the next six to twelve months.
The main goal is to simplify operations and optimize cross-chain communication, ensuring that actions execute smoothly across the base layer and rollups.
The Ethereum ecosystem is fragmented due to the proliferation of layer-2 protocols, each with its own features and challenges. This fragmentation has created bottlenecks in transaction settlement and limits the consistency of user experience. The Foundation aims to overcome these obstacles by standardizing message flows and accelerating crosschain infrastructure, key factors for improving network efficiency and reliability.
Ethereum Organizes Multiple Workstreams
Interoperability work is structured into three streams. The first, initialization, includes three central projects: the Open Intents Framework, the Ethereum Interoperability Layer, and the definition of interoperability standards.
- The Open Intents Framework provides a modular, lightweight structure to integrate intents into smart contracts, with audits scheduled for the third quarter and crosschain validation expected in the fourth quarter.
- The Ethereum Interoperability Layer offers a reliable transport between layer-2 protocols, led by the ERC-4337 team, which promotes account abstraction and improves smart contract wallets.
- The interoperability standards define rules for addresses, asset consolidation, and common formats, ensuring bridges and verification systems can operate interchangeably.
The second stream focuses on increasing operational speed across all levels, optimizing inclusion times and settlement on layer-2. The third stream targets final refinements, improving zero-knowledge proof support and reducing finalization times on layer-1.
These initiatives aim to make user experience faster, more consistent, and reliable, while enabling the expansion and interconnection of protocols within the Ethereum ecosystem.
With this approach, the Ethereum Foundation intends to develop and consolidate an interoperable infrastructure that allows users to interact easily and consistently with multiple layers and protocols, laying the foundation for a more integrated and efficient ecosystem in the near term
