Five Trends in Blockchain Technology Development in 2023

1. Important Upgrade of Ethereum

In 2023, Ethereum will undergo two significant upgrades:

• Shanghai Upgrade: Open Staking Withdrawals, Expected to Increase Staking Volume and Related Project Competition
• Cancun Upgrade: May include Proto-Danksharding and EVM optimizations, which will significantly enhance performance.

In addition, Ethereum is also preparing for future upgrades, such as the KZG Ceremony and the establishment of Danksharding standards.

2. Development of Staking Track

With the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, the Staking sector will welcome multi-faceted development:

• Liquidity Staking Plan Optimization
• Improvements to the Decentralized Staking Product
• Innovative attempts such as secondary pledge
• Decentralized Validator Network Exploration
• Staking yield stabilization solution

3. Modular Blockchain and Layer 2 Optimization

Modular Blockchain will achieve progress on multiple levels:

• A new competitor has emerged in the data availability layer.
• Improvement in execution layer efficiency
• Layer 2 optimization solutions are emerging, such as modular Rollup, rapid development tools, etc.
• Sequencer decentralization has become the focus
• Exploration of new architectures such as Layer 3

4. Expansion of ZK Technology Applications

zkEVM will see multiple mainnet launches, but the technology maturity still requires time. The application of ZK technology in other fields is worth looking forward to, such as:

• zkBridge and other cross-chain applications
• Cross-chain verification of identity authentication and records
• Layer 2 liquidity sharing

5. Terminal Application Innovation

Wallets and user-end applications will see many innovations:

• MPC has become standard, supporting more application scenarios.
• Account abstraction (AA) is mature, combined with MPC
• Expansion of payment and financial services on the Lightning Network
• Developer tools further improved

In general, blockchain technology will make progress in various directions such as infrastructure, scaling solutions, cross-chain technology, and privacy computing in 2023, laying a foundation for industry development.