Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum is on the verge of solving a major blockchain problem

According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum is on the verge of a fundamental breakthrough. In a message on

Ethereum holds the key

According to Buterin, the key lies in two technological pillars: Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) and zkEVMs (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines). Together they make Ethereum “a fundamentally new and more powerful type of decentralized network.”

“With Ethereum, PeerDAS (2025) and zkEVMs (parts of the network of which will use them in 2026), we get decentralization, consensus and high bandwidth at the same time,” Buterin said.
“The trilemma has been solved, not in theory, but with running code.”

What’s live already?

PeerDAS was introduced in December via the Fusaka upgrade and is already active on mainnet. This technology allows Ethereum to process much more data without requiring nodes to download entire data sets, increasing scalability without sacrificing decentralization.

zkEVMs have been around for some time and are technically compatible with the existing Ethereum Virtual Machine, but add zero-knowledge proofs. According to Buterin, they are already production-ready in terms of performance, but are still in an “alpha phase” in terms of safety.

Roadmap towards 2030

Buterin outlined a multi-year roadmap in which Ethereum will gradually fully switch to this new architecture:

• 2026: significant increases in the gas limit (not dependent on zkEVMs) and the first possibilities to run a zkEVM node
• 2026–2028: repricing of gas, adjustments to the state structure and further safety optimizations
• 2027–2030: Major further gas limit increases, with zkEVMs becoming the primary way to validate blocks

According to Buterin, safety is the last remaining point of attention, but there is also a clear development route there.

A ten-year process

The breakthrough did not come out of nowhere. Buterin emphasizes that Ethereum has been working towards this for more than a decade, and points to his first publications on data availability from 2017. “This has been a ten-year journey,” he wrote. “But we’re here now.”

The blockchain trilemma has been a structural limitation of blockchain networks for years. The choice is often made for speed and scale at the expense of decentralization, or for security and decentralization with limited capacity.

Buterin cited Bitcoin as an example of a network that is extremely robust and decentralized, but struggles with scalability.

If Buterin’s analysis is correct, Ethereum is poised to gain a structural advantage over other blockchains. Not through marketing or promises, but through actual technological breakthroughs that are already (partly) live.