Vitalik Claims Ethereum Has Addressed Crypto’s Major Issue

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced that the network has successfully addressed blockchain’s core trilemma through the integration of zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines and PeerDAS technology, which is now operational on the mainnet.

This significant advancement represents the conclusion of a decade-long technical endeavor that started with Buterin’s initial data availability sampling commit in 2015 and the early development of ZKEVM around 2020.

“These are not minor enhancements; they are transforming Ethereum into a fundamentally new and more robust type of decentralized network,” Buterin stated in a post on X, elaborating on how the protocol now achieves decentralization, consensus, and high bandwidth concurrently, a feat previously deemed unattainable.

With ZKEVMs reaching alpha stage (production-quality performance, with remaining tasks focused on safety) and PeerDAS now active on the mainnet, it’s time to delve deeper into what this combination signifies for Ethereum.
These are not minor enhancements; they are transforming Ethereum into a…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 3, 2026

Technical Milestone Reshapes Blockchain Architecture

Buterin pointed out that early peer-to-peer networks encountered significant limitations, with BitTorrent providing excellent bandwidth and decentralization but lacking a consensus mechanism.

Conversely, Bitcoin attained decentralization and consensus, albeit at the expense of extremely low throughput due to replicated rather than distributed work.

Ethereum’s new framework disrupts this norm by distributing computational tasks across nodes while ensuring cryptographic verification of all state transitions.

ZKEVMs have reached production-quality performance, with proving durations decreasing from 16 minutes to just 16 seconds, and costs plummeting by 45 times, with 99% of Ethereum blocks now verifiable in under 10 seconds on designated hardware.

Simultaneously, PeerDAS empowers nodes to confirm data availability by sampling small segments instead of downloading full blocks, significantly enhancing throughput without compromising decentralization.

The Ethereum Foundation has established a security-first roadmap mandating teams to achieve 128-bit provable security by the end of 2026, with interim milestones set for 100-bit security by May 2026 and compulsory integration with the soundcalc security estimation tool by February.

Ethereum Foundation emphasizes zkEVM security over speed with a new 2026 roadmap targeting 128-bit provable security standards. #Ethereum #Roadmap https://t.co/MI00jkIF91

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) December 21, 2025

“If an attacker can fabricate a proof, they can fabricate anything: mint tokens from nothing, alter state, steal funds,” the foundation cautioned in December, stressing that performance improvements must not jeopardize cryptographic integrity.

George Kadianakis from the foundation’s cryptography team highlighted the necessity of securing architectures before they evolve into moving targets.

“Once teams achieve these goals and zkVM architectures stabilize, the formal verification efforts we’ve been investing in can fully realize their potential,” he noted, adding that recent progress in compact polynomial commitment schemes like WHIR and approaches such as JaggedPCS now make ambitious security objectives feasible.

Rollout Timeline Extends Through 2030

Buterin laid out a four-year deployment plan beginning with significant non-ZKEVM-dependent gas limit increases in 2026 through Balance Attack Limits and the enshrinement of Proposer-Builder Separation, along with the initial chances to operate ZKEVM nodes.

From 2026 to 2028, developers will implement gas repricing, modifications to state structures, and the relocation of execution payloads into blobs to safely accommodate higher throughput.

By 2027 through 2030, Buterin anticipates ZKEVM validation will emerge as the primary method for block verification as gas limits substantially exceed current capacities.

The roadmap also includes distributed block building as a third essential element, with Buterin describing a “long-term ideal holy grail” where complete blocks are never concentrated in a single location, thereby mitigating centralized interference risks and enhancing geographic fairness.

While acknowledging technical advancements, Buterin cautioned in a separate post on January 1 that Ethereum must resist the temptation to pursue “fleeting trends” such as tokenized dollars or political memecoins.

“Ethereum must do more to fulfill its own stated objectives,” he asserted, advocating for applications that endure the “walkaway test” by continuing to operate even if original developers vanish and maintaining stability regardless of external disruptions, including hypothetical scenarios like Cloudflare being compromised by state actors.

Vitalik Buterin urges Ethereum to concentrate on long-term decentralization objectives rather than pursuing fleeting trends like tokenized dollars and political memecoins in 2026. #Ethereum #VitalikButerin https://t.co/sB4aFA9OfT

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) January 1, 2026

The co-founder also separately warned last month that the complexity of the protocol undermines trustlessness by restricting the number of individuals who can comprehend the system from start to finish.

“If only a handful of people can grasp how your privacy protocol operates, you haven’t achieved trustlessness; you’ve merely altered your trust dynamics,” privacy network INTMAX asserted, echoing Buterin’s concern that increasing technical abstractions risk centralizing functional control among specialists.

Institutional adoption continues to accelerate despite these architectural hurdles, with Ethereum’s total value locked expected to increase tenfold in 2026.

Already, JPMorgan is launching a $100 million tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, and Deutsche Bank is developing a Layer 2 utilizing ZKsync technology, while 24 financial institutions are experimenting with asset tokenization under Singapore’s regulatory framework.

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