Vitalik: Ethereum's next hard fork will include multiple EIPs, with a mid-term focus on the state layer Foresight News reported on site that Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, delivered a speech titled "The Future Direction of Ethereum Protocol" at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, announcing the roadmap for Ethereum over the next five years. Ethereum has two core functions: serving as a 'public bulletin board' for applications to publish messages and allow everyone to see the content and order of the releases, and providing computing power to run shared digital objects controlled by code, with the goal of ensuring user self sovereignty, security, verifiability, and fair participation. The short-term core protocol objectives include five: short-term expansion, launching ZK-EVM promotion, early post quantum preparation, improving block building pipelines, and privacy support. In terms of short-term expansion, the next hard fork will include multiple EIPs, including block level access lists for parallelization, repricing of Gas, ePBS for longer block verification, and improvements to node state synchronization. EIP-8141 (Account Abstraction) treats transactions as a series of calls and natively supports smart contract wallets, gas payment, quantum signature resistance, and privacy protocols. The anti quantum signature algorithm has been in existence for 20 years, and the main problem lies in efficiency: the signature volume reaches 2-3 KB (currently 64 B), and the on chain consumption is about 200000 Gas (currently 3000 Gas). Solutions include hash based signatures and 'lattice+vectorization' schemes. Mid term goal focuses on the state layer: Expanding the execution layer is relatively easy, while expanding the state layer is more difficult, requiring state tree optimization and exploring solutions that do not require permanent storage of all states. \There are five long-term protocol goals: maximizing secure consensus (able to withstand 49% node failures in synchronous networks, maintaining a final security threshold of 33% in asynchronous networks); Formal validation of all content (starting to use AI to generate mathematical proofs); Comprehensive quantum resistance; Maximum simplicity; Maximum foresight, even if the core developer team no longer exists, the security of the protocol should not be affected (via walkaway test). Lean Consensus will integrate the advantages of Bitcoin style 'available chain' and BFT style 'finality' mechanisms, combining quantum resistance and fast finality (expected to take 1-3 slots, with final confirmation completed within 10-20 seconds). In terms of ZK-EVM, it has achieved 'fast enough' to prove EVM execution in real time by 2025; The goal for 2026 is to be 'sufficiently secure' and begin allowing a small number of nodes (such as independent stakers) to use it; By around 2028, ZK-EVM will become the primary method for verifying chains