The Ethereum merger is a highly anticipated upgrade that will see the blockchain transition from proof of work to proof of equity, is being hailed as one of the largest upgrades in the history of the cryptocurrency industry, and will usher in a new era for Ethereum as a modern and environmentally friendly blockchain. Contrary to popular belief, the merger is not the final upgrade of Ethereum, and the multi-year roadmap detailed by founder Vitalik Buterin details exciting revolutionary plans to make Ethereum the backbone of the next generation of the Internet.

A few days ago, at the annual Ethereum conference EthCC in Paris, Vitalik gave a 45-minute presentation detailing Ethereum's long-term vision and where it will go after the merger. Surprisingly, he noted that he thinks Ethereum will only be 55% complete after the merger, meaning Ethereum is less than half of its final state. In a roadmap released in December, he detailed five different targets: Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, Splurge. These goals will help Ethereum reach its final state. Let's take a look at these goals and why they're so important.

The first item on the Ethereum roadmap is Merge, which is ongoing. As mentioned earlier, the merger marks a shift from proof of work to proof of equity, which will make blockchain 99.97% more energy efficient and pave the way for other upgrades. With an environmentally friendly blockchain, more ESG-conscious companies and investors will feel comfortable using Ethereum, which will increase adoption and usage. In addition, the upgrade will reduce the release rate of Ethereum, which will most likely become a deflationary asset. The date of the merger is presumed to be September 19, which means we are only two months away from the momentous event. Blockchain has never changed its consensus mechanism, and merging has been described as changing the engine of an airplane on the fly. Despite the difficulties, the developers have made great progress and a successful transition seems possible.

The next project, Surge, aims to bring massive scalability improvements through sharding. Sharding is essentially a method of breaking up a blockchain into several different interconnected chains, each with its own throughput. It allows higher throughput, which, coupled with Layer 2 Rollup, can help Ethereum scale to theoretically process 100,000 transactions per second. According to Ethereum's website, sharding should appear sometime in 2023 and is the next upgrade after the merger. As scalability issues are resolved, Ethereum will be able to compete directly with the alternative Tier 1 and its value proposition will increase significantly.

The next upgrade, the Verge, is probably the most difficult to understand without a technical background. Basically, it will introduce Verkle Tree, which will reduce the storage requirements for nodes, resulting in more decentralization and scalability. The storage requirements are so small that it is possible to run Ethereum nodes without any hard drive space.

Purge is similar to the Verge in that it helps increase efficiency and reduce storage requirements on nodes. Today, Ethereum verifiers need to download the entire blockchain history from 2014, which takes up terabytes of space. Purge wants to change that so that customers don't need to hold storage for more than a year. According to Vitalik, it may be possible to allow nodes to run on smartphones.

Splurge is a series of miscellaneous upgrades that will help improve the overall Ethereum experience, creating more opportunities for developers to create interesting account management systems, in order to ensure that the network runs smoothly after dealing with the first four stages.

If Ethereum's goals are met, it could help cement blockchain's position as the dominant smart contract platform. This road map could take years to fully complete, and it is sure to be other changes and unforeseen upgrades along the way. Still, this exciting vision of the future of the protocol should get someone excited about Ethereum's vision.