At the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin clearly laid out the technical roadmap for the next five years. His key point: Ethereum isn’t competing with high-frequency trading platforms on speed. Instead, it aims to become the world’s safest, most decentralized, and always-online 'world computer.' To achieve this goal, he proposed a three-step plan: short-term acceleration, mid-term state optimization, and long-term solidification. In the short term, Ethereum will make transactions faster and cheaper through parallel processing, gas fee repricing, and supporting account abstraction (like letting others pay transaction fees for you). In the long term, there are two major challenges to tackle: 1. Quantum resistance—current solutions are too expensive and bulky, so efforts are underway to compress them. 2. By around 2028, leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology (ZK-EVM) to enable regular smartphones to independently verify Ethereum transactions and achieve 'single-slot finality' in just a few seconds. These plans are undeniably bullish for $ETH—they’re not just empty promises but a clear direction for technical evolution. As for those questioning 'how long has it been since Vitalik actually contributed to ETH,' it’s actually a misunderstanding. He’s shifted from daily management to cutting-edge research. The technical roadmap and key improvement proposals (like EIP-8141) are initiatives he’s actively driving. In other words, he’s never left—he’s just leading Ethereum forward in a deeper, more strategic way.