Ethereum recently underwent a massive overhaul called “Istanbul.” The non-reversible update (hard fork) managed to improve transaction speeds and overall security, thanks to six Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs).
Two of the protocols, according to blockchain-based identity management company iden3, grant the Ethereum blockchain with a maximum theoretical speed of 2,048 transactions-per-second (TPS). Before the update, Ethereum’s blockchain handled no more than 30 TPS, which bottlenecked Ethereum’s scaling and widespread adoption.
EIP-1088 introduced a reduction in gas usage and gas repricing for the short cryptographic proofs-of-integrity (PoI), which runs when a batch of 15 blocks is being processed (zk-SNARKs). Each ZKRollup batch consists of 15 Ethereum blocks. The second improvement, EIP-2028, reduced the cost of call data from 68 gas to just 16 gas, which also improved speed and scalability.
Despite the massive speed boost, Ethereum is still a bit under what Ethereum developer Eric Conner claimed: 3,000 TPS. On the other hand, Ethereum’s blockchain surpasses VISA’s score of 2,000 TPS. The bottleneck this time is based on how the PoI codes are generated. Iden3 noted that their system would require several minutes to generate the SNARK code to validate the ZKRollup batch.
However, another problem might come soon for the Ethereum ecosystem – the theoretical maximum TPS figures can only be achieved when the blockchain is running on powerful servers. Also, a modified version of the block explorer is mandatory to handle and visualize such vast amounts of data.
Ethereum developers are working around the clock to improve further the Ethereum network, with goals like reducing proof generation times, optimizing gas usage and costs, and enhancing the security by utilizing parallel networks.