![](https://planetcrypto.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/The-Scourge-Sounds-Like-a-Horror-Movie-Vitalik-Buterin-ART-727x1024.jpg)
This week Vitalik Buterin announced the latest stage of Ethereum’s technical roadmap, named ‘The Scourge’.
But what is a scourge?
According to the dictionary, it means ‘a whip used for punishment; or a person or thing that causes great suffering’.
So that’s reassuring. It sounds more like a horror film title than a step in a technological roadmap.
Except, when you look at all the stages of Buterin’s roadmap, they all sound like they could be horror film titles…
‘The Merge’: when an online transaction goes horrible wrong, a man ends up as part human, part crypto-currency, and starts a reign of terror against central banks and traditional forms of monetary exchange.
‘The Surge’: when Ethereum’s value crashes, thousands of bereft investors all mysteriously feel a simultaneous surge of regret and misery that manifests itself in a group vomiting event which drowns the world in sick.
‘The Scourge’: every blockchain in use combines to form a huge, online digital whip which physically attacks computer users worldwide to punish them for their sins… except for Terra Luna owners who’ve suffered enough already.
‘The Verge’: a man mows a strip of grass next to a busy road, haunted by the ghosts of his lost family… who threw him out after discovering he’d invested all their money in Celsius Exchange.
‘The Purge’: is literally a horror film already!
‘The Splurge’: when a series of people spend an inexplicable amount of money on dodgy crypto-currency, a detective finds that every person involved was temporarily possessed by the spirits of crypto-finance arse-wits Kim Kardashian and Matt Damon, and recruits high-priest of real money Warren Buffet to exorcise them.