The Splurge is trivialization. It completes Ethereum's scaling roadmap by abstracting away complexity for users and developers, shifting the burden from the application layer to the protocol itself.
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Why the Splurge is Where Ethereum Becomes Trivial
The Merge and Surge built the engine. The Splurge is where we install the automatic transmission, power steering, and cruise control, making Ethereum's raw power accessible to every developer.
introduction
THE TRIVIALITY THESIS
Introduction
The Splurge phase transforms Ethereum from a complex developer puzzle into a trivial-to-use global computer.
Current UX is a tax. Users navigate bridges like Across and Stargate, manage gas on dozens of L2s, and sign endless wallet pop-ups. This friction is a direct cost that suppresses adoption.
Account abstraction (ERC-4337) is the keystone. It enables sponsored transactions and session keys, letting protocols like UniswapX or Safe wallets pay fees and batch actions, making wallets invisible.
Evidence: Post-Splurge, a user swaps tokens across chains in one click. The protocol orchestrates intent-based routing via CowSwap and UniswapX, sourcing liquidity and settling on the optimal chain. The user never sees a gas token.
thesis-statement
THE ENDGAME
The Core Argument: Abstraction as the Ultimate Scaling
Ethereum's final scaling frontier is not raw throughput, but the complete abstraction of its underlying complexity from end-users and developers.
Scaling is a UX problem. The Splurge's focus on account abstraction (ERC-4337) and intent-based architectures shifts the scaling metric from transactions-per-second to users-per-second. This eliminates gas management and private key custody as user friction points.
Abstraction enables vertical scaling. Protocols like UniswapX and Across use intents to route orders optimally across chains and liquidity pools. This creates a meta-layer of efficiency that no single L1 or L2 can match through raw speed alone.
The L2 is the new kernel. With zkEVMs (like Starknet, zkSync) achieving bytecode-level equivalence, developers write for one virtual machine. The Splurge's verification and proof aggregation makes deploying secure, verifiable state across hundreds of chains trivial.
Evidence: Particle Network's intent-centric wallet infrastructure demonstrates this, bundling user actions into single, gas-abstracted transactions that execute across Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base, rendering the underlying chain irrelevant to the user experience.
key-trends
WHERE ETHEREUM BECOMES INVISIBLE
The Splurge's Pillars of Trivialization
The Splurge's final upgrades shift focus from core protocol mechanics to seamless user experience, abstracting away blockchain complexity.
01
Account Abstraction (ERC-4337)
Eliminates seed phrases and gas payments for users. Smart accounts enable social recovery, batched transactions, and sponsorship.
- User Benefit: Gasless onboarding and session keys for apps.
- Developer Benefit: ~90% reduction in UX friction for new users.
- Ecosystem Impact: Enables mass-market dApps indistinguishable from Web2.
~90%
Friction Down
0 ETH
Onboarding Cost
02
The Verkle Tree Transition
Replaces Merkle Patricia Tries with Verkle Trees, enabling stateless clients and ultra-light nodes.
- User Benefit: ~100x lighter node requirements, enabling verification on phones.
- Protocol Benefit: Removes the ~650 GB state size barrier for solo stakers.
- Network Effect: Decentralizes validation, reducing reliance on centralized infrastructure like Infura.
100x
Lighter Client
~0 GB
State Burden
03
Single-Slot Finality (SSF)
Replaces the current ~15-minute probabilistic finality with instant, irreversible block confirmation in a single slot (~12 seconds).
- User Benefit: Eliminates reorg risk and MEV uncertainty for instant settlement.
- Exchange Benefit: Enables CEX-like deposit/withdrawal speeds for DEXs like Uniswap.
- Cross-Chain Impact: Makes trust-minimized bridges like Across and LayerZero more efficient.
12s
Finality Time
0%
Reorg Risk
04
Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS)
Formalizes the separation of block building from block proposing to democratize MEV and censor resistance.
- Validator Benefit: Guarantees fair block rewards, neutralizing advanced MEV bots.
- User Benefit: Reduces front-running and sandwich attacks on AMMs.
- Network Benefit: Institutionalizes credible neutrality, a core defense against OFAC compliance overreach.
>99%
Censorship Res.
Fair
MEV Distribution
05
Data Availability Sampling (DAS) & danksharding
Scales data availability for L2 rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism by orders of magnitude, making blob data cheap and abundant.
- Rollup Benefit: ~100x cheaper data posting costs, enabling micro-transactions.
- User Benefit: Sustains <$0.01 L2 transaction fees indefinitely.
- Ecosystem Lock-in: Cements Ethereum as the only credible DA layer, marginalizing alt-L1s.
100x
Cheaper Blobs
<$0.01
L2 TX Fee
06
PeerDAS & History Expiry
Distributes data availability responsibility across the entire validator set and prunes ancient history, ensuring perpetual scalability.
- Node Benefit: Eliminates the 'state bloat' doomsday scenario; nodes don't need infinite storage.
- Network Benefit: Enables petabyte-scale data throughput for thousands of rollups.
- Longevity: Solves Ethereum's final scaling constraint, trivializing data for the next decade.
Petabyte
Data Scale
Perpetual
Scalability
THE INFRASTRUCTURE DECISION MATRIX
Splurge vs. Legacy: The Complexity Tax
Quantifying the operational overhead of building on a mature protocol (Ethereum Post-Splurge) versus a legacy L1 or early-stage L2.
| Infrastructure Burden | Ethereum (Post-Splurge) | Legacy L1 (e.g., Solana, Avalanche) | Early-Stage L2 (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism Pre-4844) |
|---|---|---|---|
Protocol-Level MEV Mitigation | Partial (via sequencer) | ||
Account Abstraction (ERC-4337) Native Support | Requires Bundler Deployment | ||
State Expiry & History Pruning Roadmap | EIP-4444 (2024/25) | Not Defined | Derived from L1 |
Client Diversity Criticality | < 33% for Consensus Attack |
| N/A (Sequencer Centralization) |
Cross-Domain Messaging Standardization | Native via EIP-7212 & RIP-7212 | Proprietary Bridges Required | Proprietary Bridges Required |
Annual Protocol Change Management | 1-2 EIP Upgrades | Hard Forks as Needed | Coupled to L1 + Independent Upgrades |
Time to Finality for dApp Logic | ~12 minutes (64 blocks) | ~2 seconds | ~1 hour (Challenge Period) |
Infra Team Headcount Estimate (for CEX-grade reliability) | 3-5 Engineers | 5-8 Engineers | 4-7 Engineers |
deep-dive
THE USER EXPERIENCE REVOLUTION
From Accounts to Intents: The End of the EOA Tyranny
The Splurge phase replaces manual transaction execution with declarative intent fulfillment, abstracting away blockchain complexity.
EOAs are a UX dead-end. Externally Owned Accounts force users to sign and sequence every atomic operation, a model incompatible with mass adoption. The intent-centric paradigm shifts the burden to specialized solvers who compete to fulfill user declarations.
Intents abstract gas and execution. Users specify a desired outcome (e.g., 'swap X for Y at best rate'), not a transaction. Systems like UniswapX and CowSwap already delegate routing and MEV protection to solver networks, making gas fees and slippage a backend concern.
Account abstraction is the prerequisite. ERC-4337's smart contract wallets enable this shift by bundling operations and sponsoring gas. This creates a market for intent standardization, where protocols like Across and LayerZero compete on fulfillment speed and cost.
The endpoint is trivial UX. The final state is a blockchain that feels like an API: users express goals, and the network's solver economy handles the rest. This dissolves the technical barrier between Web2 and on-chain activity.
counter-argument
THE TRIVIALITY TRAP
The Bear Case: Is This Just Cosmetic?
The Splurge risks making Ethereum's core innovation—its decentralized settlement—invisible and irrelevant to end-users.
The abstraction layer becomes the product. The Splurge's focus on seamless UX through account abstraction (ERC-4337) and intents (via UniswapX, CowSwap) moves all complexity off-chain. The user interacts with a solver's promise, not the chain. Ethereum becomes a silent, commoditized back-end, akin to AWS for blockchains.
Sovereignty shifts to middleware. The critical logic of transaction ordering and execution moves to centralized sequencers (like Arbitrum's) and intent solvers. This creates a new points of failure and rent extraction, centralizing power in a few infrastructure players like Across and LayerZero, not the base layer.
Evidence: The dominance of L2s is the precedent. Over 90% of Ethereum's economic activity already occurs on rollups. The Splurge accelerates this, making the base chain a data availability and dispute resolution co-processor. The brand 'Ethereum' becomes a trust label for a system users never directly touch.
takeaways
THE USER-CENTRIC ERA
TL;DR for the Time-Poor CTO
The Splurge phase moves Ethereum's complexity from the user's experience into the protocol's plumbing.
01
The Problem: UX is Still a Nightmare
Users manage gas, sign multiple transactions, and navigate fragmented liquidity. This is a massive adoption barrier.\n- Cognitive Load: Non-crypto users can't handle seed phrases and wallet pop-ups.\n- Friction Costs: Failed transactions and manual bridging burn time and money.
~5+
Clicks per Swap
$1B+
MEV Extracted
02
The Solution: Intent-Based Architectures
Users declare what they want, not how to do it. Solvers (like those in UniswapX and CowSwap) compete to fulfill it optimally.\n- Abstraction: No more gas token management or slippage tolerance guesswork.\n- Efficiency: Solvers batch and route across Across, LayerZero, and DEXs for best price and success.
-99%
Revert Rate
10-15%
Better Prices
03
The Enabler: Account Abstraction (ERC-4337)
Smart contract wallets become the default, powered by Paymasters and Bundlers. This is the foundational plumbing.\n- Sponsored Txns: Apps pay gas, enabling true freemium models.\n- Social Recovery: Eliminates the seed phrase single point of failure.\n- Batch Operations: One signature for multiple actions.
~5M
AA Wallets
-100%
Seed Phrase Risk
04
The Result: Trivial Onboarding
The end-state is a blockchain that feels like Web2 but with Web3 ownership. Verkle Trees and EIP-7702 further abstract state and authorization.\n- One-Click Flows: Buy, swap, bridge with a credit card and email.\n- Enterprise-Grade: Predictable costs and guaranteed execution for B2B use cases.
<1 min
Onboard Time
$0.01
Predictable Cost
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