Ethereum as a Permanent Foundation of Decentralized Infrastructure: Technical Ambitions and the Network's Mission

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shared a fresh outline of the network’s strategic development at the beginning of January. Unlike the pursuit of short-term trends, he focused on Ethereum’s deep mission — creating a global computer that will serve as a reliable infrastructure for a free and open Internet in the long term.

Technical Priorities and Engineering Milestones

The Ethereum ecosystem plans to implement a series of improvements by 2025. Key areas include: expanding Gas limits, accumulating Blob space, optimizing validator software, and breakthrough achievements in zkEVM scalability. Special emphasis is placed on the development of zkEVM and the implementation of PeerDAS — these innovations are considered as key steps in transforming blockchain to a qualitatively new level of power and efficiency.

However, developers acknowledge the real challenges facing the project. Achieving these ambitious goals will require intensive work and continuous improvement at all levels.

Decentralized Applications as the Backbone of the New Economy

The fundamental value of Ethereum lies not in accumulating speculative capital, but in building an ecosystem of decentralized applications. Such systems can operate without the possibility of fraud, censorship, or intermediary interference. They pass the “independence test”: even if the original authors of the code leave the project, the architecture will continue to operate stably and predictably.

From a user perspective, this means a fundamental difference: if traditional services like (for example, Cloudflare) experience downtime or change policies, decentralized networks maintain continuity regardless of corporate fluctuations, ideological shifts, or changes in political direction.

Fundamental Architecture and Privacy Protection

The network will continue to expand its focus on financial solutions, but its purpose also extends to identity systems, governance mechanisms, and other critical infrastructure of human civilization. A key feature is built-in user privacy protection, ensuring that data and operations remain beyond the control of centralized players.

Two-Dimensional Condition for Achieving Goals

Realizing this vision is based on two parallel dimensions of progress:

Basic level: development of software for launching and interacting with the blockchain, architectural improvements of the network itself.

Application level: development of user services and integrations that will be as accessible and efficient as possible.

Both directions are already developing dynamically, but they need acceleration to meet global challenges.

Tools and Perspectives

The Ethereum developer community possesses a arsenal of powerful technologies that enable the implementation of this ambitious program. The task boils down to fully mobilizing existing resources and knowledge. With consistent execution of set tasks, all goals will be achieved.