Ethereum’s next major upgrade, the Pusaka hard fork, is expected to take place in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
According to Thomas Kajetan Stanczak, Co-Director at the Ethereum Foundation, the Pusaka network upgrade is the target, although an exact schedule has yet to be finalized.
At the core of this hard fork is the upgrade to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) through the introduction of the EVM Object Format (EOF).
EOF aims to structure smart contract bytecode to improve efficiency and prevent the execution of malicious code.
It focuses on converting the current free-form bytecode into containerized modules, thereby enhancing upgradability, and separating code from data to increase processing speed.
However, the introduction of EOF has faced some opposition.
Ethereum developer Pascal Cavarsachio has criticized EOF as being overly complex and argued that it would impose a heavy burden to maintain compatibility with the existing EVM.
He also raised concerns that adopting EOF would require tool upgrades and could introduce new security vulnerabilities.
In a survey conducted by Ethereum voting platform ETHPulse, 39 voters holding a total of 17,745 ETH opposed the implementation of EOF, while only 7 voters, each holding less than 300 ETH, were in favor.
