Written by: Techub News Compilation

At the recent Ethereum developer conference Devconnect held in Buenos Aires, co-founder Vitalik Buterin (V God) delivered a speech titled “30 Minutes to Understand Ethereum.” This talk not only reviewed the core ideas of Ethereum but also clearly outlined its technological development roadmap for the coming years, serving as an important window to understand the current challenges and future directions of Ethereum.

The Philosophy of Ethereum: From "Don't be Evil" to "Can't be Evil"

Vitalik Buterin (V God) began not by discussing technology directly but by using the collapses of FTX and Mt. Gox as examples to explain the core philosophy represented by Ethereum. He considered the failure of FTX as a “180-degree reversal” of Ethereum’s principles: a highly centralized, personality-reliant, and unverifiable model.

He compared the slogan from the old internet era “Don't be evil” with the essential difference of blockchain’s “Can't be evil.” The former relies on the moral self-discipline of centralized entities, while the latter fundamentally eliminates the need for trust in a single entity through technological design. V God pointed out that the goal of blockchain technology is not to appeal to “trust me, because I am a good person,” but to build a system that you don't need to trust.

Furthermore, he distinguished between the models of “companies” and “communities.” A company operates under a “central radiating” structure, where a central entity provides services and charges fees; in contrast, a community is a network where “everyone builds each other up.” He used Estonia's “e-residency” program as an example, which, while providing valuable digital services, is fundamentally still a centralized service rather than a truly decentralized community. The vision of Ethereum is to build the latter—a global, open, censorship-resistant platform where everyone can participate in building and benefiting.

What Can Blockchain Do, and What Can't It Do?

V God then returned to the fundamentals of technology, explaining the role of blockchain, especially Ethereum, as the “world computer.” He emphasized that Ethereum's core innovation lies in its programmability. Early blockchains were single-purpose protocols or “Swiss Army knife” protocols (offering a limited set of fixed functions), while Ethereum allows developers to upload any computer program (smart contracts), thereby infinitely expanding its application possibilities.

The most mature application area of blockchain is undoubtedly finance, addressing the core problem of “double spending.” In a decentralized network, without a consensus mechanism to determine transaction order, one person could spend the same money multiple times. The consensus mechanisms of blockchain (such as proof of work, proof of stake) ensure global state consistency, which is the foundation of the value of digital currencies.

Beyond finance, blockchain also demonstrates unique value in other areas:

• Decentralized identity and naming: Such as ENS (Ethereum Name Service), allowing users to truly own their usernames, use them across applications, and not be controlled by any single service provider.
• Censorship resistance and participation assurance: Blockchain ensures any valid transaction can quickly be included on-chain. This is crucial for preventing market manipulation and ensuring voting fairness.
• Proof of non-existence: Can prove that the total issuance of something (such as community membership credentials) is limited and cannot be secretly overissued by the issuer.
• Timestamp proof: Proves that a certain document or data existed before or after a specific point in time.

However, V God also candidly pointed out the inherent limitations of blockchain technology:

• Poor privacy: By default, blockchain transactions are public, which V God humorously described as “the Twitter of bank accounts.”
• Extreme scalability is unattainable: Performing large-scale computations on the Ethereum mainnet (like generating AI images) is extremely costly.
• High latency: This is an inevitable cost of decentralization, as global consensus cannot achieve millisecond-level response.
• Inability to access real-world information: Smart contracts cannot directly know whether off-chain events have occurred, requiring middleware like oracles.

V God noted that blockchain needs to combine with programmable cryptography technologies like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to break through these limitations and build more powerful applications.

Future Roadmap: Scalable, Censorship-Resistant, and User-Friendly

The focus of the speech was on the technological evolution of Ethereum in the future. V God outlined the upgrade path from short-term to long-term, with the core goal of significantly improving network performance and user experience while maintaining security, decentralization, and censorship resistance, which are fundamental attributes.

2025-2026: The Arc of Scalability

Ethereum's transaction processing capacity has already increased by 50% this year, and the Gas Limit (an indicator of network capacity) is expected to further rise to 60 million. To achieve secure scalability, two key protocol upgrades (EIP) will be implemented:

• EIP-7732 (Proposer-Bidder Separation Finality): This will allow ordinary nodes to spend more time processing blocks without compromising the decentralization of the network, paving the way for securely increasing the Gas Limit.
• Block-Level Access Lists: Allow all other nodes besides block producers to process blocks in parallel, significantly enhancing network efficiency. V God humorously responded to the criticism that “EVM does not support parallelization,” stating that this upgrade will “largely solve this issue.”

ZKVM and the "Return of the Full Node Faith"

V God particularly emphasized the importance of the zero-knowledge proof virtual machine (ZKVM). Currently, running a full Ethereum node requires days to sync, over 1TB of storage, and high computing consumption. ZKVM technology allows users to confirm the correctness of blocks by generating and verifying zero-knowledge proofs without personally executing all computations. This will reduce the computational requirements for running nodes to nearly zero, though bandwidth and storage needs remain, making it feasible to run lightweight full nodes on devices like phones. V God expects the number of users capable of running full nodes to increase significantly in the next year or two.

2026-2027: Censorship Resistance and Decentralization Upgrades

Protocol improvements, including “Fossil,” will enhance the guarantees of transaction inclusion, ensuring users' transactions can be quickly packed. Meanwhile, the ongoing development of account abstraction will bring more powerful smart wallets, supporting key replacement, privacy protocol integration, and more without relying on intermediaries.

Long-Term Vision: "Lean Ethereum"

V God mentioned the “Lean Ethereum” long-term plan, aimed at deeper optimization of Ethereum, replacing existing suboptimally performing parts with components closer to the optimal solution. Topics include:

• Optimized high-performance virtual machine for ZK proofs.
• Full-stack quantum resistance.
• ZK-friendly hash functions (currently the main candidate is Poseidon, undergoing extensive security research and bug bounty programs).
• Formal verification of all key components.
• Faster final confirmation speeds.

User Experience: Privacy and Security

V God pointed out that privacy is a much broader concept than “on-chain data protection.” It includes: protecting user data from being snooped by RPC nodes, network layer privacy, voting privacy, DeFi privacy, and even private account abstraction. Security aspects involve light client improvements (such as Helios), software supply chain dependency management, on-chain version control, as well as multi-signature, social recovery wallets, and hardware wallets.

Interactive Q&A: Payments, Skills, and the Origin of the Name

In the subsequent Q&A session, V God responded to several interesting questions.

Regarding the relationship between Ethereum and Wall Street, he succinctly stated: “They are users. At Ethereum, we support users.”

When asked how the characteristics of Ethereum could be extended to a broader world, V God emphasized real-world payment applications. He recalled the early days when Bitcoin was accepted by merchants in Berlin and noted that current technologies are sufficient to make crypto payments popular again, as many physical stores in Buenos Aires now accept ETH and stablecoins. He encouraged developers to combine the ideas of openness, minimal trust, and user protection with new technologies in blockchain and cryptography, applying them to communication, governance, and even hardware.

As for what skills Ethereum community members should develop, V God suggested maintaining “breadth”: trying to buy a cup of coffee with ETH, installing wallets, using DApps, writing smart contracts, and even understanding how the underlying protocols work, while considering the interaction between technology and the real world.

Lastly, he shared some fun facts about the origin of the name “Ethereum” and its logo: The name came from hearing the name “Ethereum” while browsing a list of elements in science fiction works, and it was later discovered to originate from the “floating stone” (Etherium) in Hayao Miyazaki's movie “Castle in the Sky.” The designer of the logo might have known this source, designing it in the shape of the floating stone; V God coincidentally discovered this coincidence many years later.

Vitalik Buterin (V God) concluded by stating that Ethereum aims to be the technological cornerstone of a freer, more open, and collaborative world. It is a rapidly evolving powerful technology and a key member of the constantly growing family of trustless tools. Through the collective efforts of the community, this vision is becoming a reality.

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