Ethereum Awaits Revision of Programming Standard with ‘EVM Object Format’

Ethereum developers are gearing up for an upgrade that could bring the most fundamental changes to the network’s programming environment since the original smart contracts blockchain shook up the crypto industry with its launch nearly a decade ago.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP), known as the EVM Object Format (EOF), which has been widely discussed in developer circles this year due to concerns from some participants about possible security risks, is set to be included in a major change package known as the Pectra hard fork later this year or early next year.

The EOF proposal can be described as a set of changes aimed at updating the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the programming environment that runs smart contracts on the blockchain and arguably the features that made Ethereum different from Bitcoin and other early distributed networks when it was launched in 2015.

EOF will make smart contracts more developer-friendly, especially for those building decentralized applications in the Solidity or Vyper programming languages. However, the changes are sensitive enough to break existing smart contracts. That’s why developers are introducing a new version that will allow dApp creators to choose which version of the EVM to use when distributing their code.

Parithosh Jayanthi, core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, said: “EOF will be the first major change to EVM in years. The proposal lays the groundwork for future upgrades through EVM and showcases the foundational layers in the process of continuing to develop EVM.”