Lucía Peña
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes the network has finally achieved what blockchains have chased for over a decade: solving the scalability trilemma. Yet, his latest reflections suggest that Ethereum’s greatest threat may no longer be technical — but philosophical.
In a series of in-depth posts on X, Buterin reviewed Ethereum’s progress in 2025 while cautioning against a growing obsession with speculative narratives such as political memecoins, tokenized dollars, and artificial activity incentives.
Buterin argued that Ethereum now faces a defining choice. The network can either continue to chase the “next meta” for short-term economic signaling, or fully commit to its original mission as a neutral, censorship-resistant global computing platform.
He stressed that recent breakthroughs remove long-standing technical constraints, leaving ideology — not engineering — as the decisive factor shaping Ethereum’s future.
How Ethereum Claims to Have Solved the Scalability Trilemma
For years, blockchain design was governed by the belief that decentralization, security, and scalability could not coexist at scale.
Buterin now claims that this assumption no longer holds — not in theory, but in production-ready code.
He pointed to two major developments in 2025:
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PeerDAS, now live on Ethereum mainnet, enabling efficient data availability sampling
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Zero-Knowledge EVMs (ZK-EVMs), which have reached production-grade performance with remaining work focused on safety validation
Together, these upgrades allow Ethereum to achieve high bandwidth, strong consensus, and decentralization simultaneously.
“The trilemma has been solved,” Buterin wrote, describing the result of a research journey spanning more than a decade.
Why This Breakthrough Is Bigger Than Scaling
Buterin framed the achievement as more than faster transactions or higher throughput.
He compared the shift to merging two historic internet models:
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BitTorrent, which offered massive decentralization and bandwidth without consensus
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Bitcoin, which introduced decentralized consensus but with limited bandwidth due to full replication
Ethereum, he argued, now combines the strengths of both systems — delivering distributed consensus with scalable performance, while lowering the barrier for individuals to run nodes.
Ethereum as a Rebellion Against Centralized Internet Models
Beyond the technical layer, Buterin emphasized Ethereum’s role as a counterweight to today’s centralized, subscription-based internet.
He criticized a digital economy where essential tools are locked behind platforms controlled by intermediaries, exposing users to outages, censorship, and vendor lock-in.
“Ethereum is the rebellion against this,” he stated.
Central to this vision is the “walkaway test” — a benchmark that asks whether an application can continue functioning even if its creators disappear.
According to Buterin, true Ethereum applications must remain usable without fraud, censorship, or centralized oversight, regardless of who maintains them.
Why Many Ethereum Apps Still Fall Short
Despite Ethereum’s decentralization at the protocol level, Buterin acknowledged that many applications still rely on centralized infrastructure such as hosted services, APIs, and custodial components.
He warned that this dependency undermines Ethereum’s core promise and represents a vulnerability the new architecture is designed to eliminate.
For Ethereum to succeed, global usability and deep decentralization must advance together, both at the base layer and across the application stack.
Ethereum’s Roadmap to 2030: What Comes Next
Buterin outlined a clear, multi-year roadmap detailing how Ethereum’s architecture will evolve.
2026: The First Major Expansion Phase
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Significant gas limit increases, independent of ZK-EVMs
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Introduction of BALs and ePBS to safely support higher throughput
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First opportunities for users to run ZK-EVM nodes
2026–2028: Structural Network Changes
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Gas repricing mechanisms
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Changes to Ethereum’s state structure
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Execution payloads moving into blobs to improve efficiency and safety
2027–2030: ZK-EVMs Become the Backbone
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Further large gas limit increases
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ZK-EVMs evolve into the primary block validation mechanism
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Transition away from transaction replication toward zero-knowledge verification
Buterin emphasized that these are not incremental tweaks, but a shift toward a fundamentally new class of decentralized network.
The Long-Term “Holy Grail”: Fully Distributed Block Building
Looking beyond scaling, Buterin identified distributed block building as Ethereum’s ultimate long-term goal.
In this ideal future, no single entity ever assembles a full block of transactions.
While not immediately necessary, he argued that achieving this capability would dramatically reduce centralization risks.
Potential paths include:
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In-protocol solutions, such as expanding FOCIL
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Out-of-protocol approaches, like distributed builder marketplaces
Such systems would reduce interference risks, improve geographic fairness, and ensure equitable access regardless of location.
A Technical Victory, But an Open Question
Buterin’s message served as both a progress report and a warning.
With the engineering barriers removed, Ethereum no longer has technical excuses for drifting toward centralization. What remains uncertain is whether the community will use these tools to build a true world computer, or continue prioritizing short-term market narratives.
As Buterin framed it, the real test is no longer scalability — but whether Ethereum can pass the walkaway test in practice.
