2026 Tương Lai Phát Triển Ethereum: Báo Cáo Nghiên Cứu 22.000 Từ (Phần 1): Còn Bao Xa Từ "Cơ Sở Hạ Tầng" Đến "Trung Tâm Hệ Sinh Thái"?

As one of the most important smart contract platforms today, Ethereum has built the richest on-chain ecosystem and continues to lead the direction of Web3 technological innovation. However, with the continuous expansion of the ecosystem's scale, a series of problems accumulated in Ethereum's underlying architecture and development path are gradually emerging and becoming more complex. For example, the ecosystem governance and benefit distribution mechanisms remain controversial; during the scaling process, it is difficult to balance consensus security, validation efficiency, and decentralization; data availability and scaling paths (such as sharding and the Blob mechanism) still face uncertainties; the architectural shift centered on Rollups impacts the main chain's value capture and ecosystem structure; the power distribution and ordering mechanisms surrounding MEV are reshaping the block production system; and competition from high-performance public chains exerts external pressure on Ethereum's performance and ecosystem appeal.

Against this backdrop, the Ethereum Foundation and core developers have intensively promoted a series of key adjustments and innovative attempts over the past year. For example, they restructured the Foundation's organizational structure, clarified the responsibilities of the Protocol team, redefined the functions of L1 and L2, adjusted the Foundation's position in the ecosystem, explored commercialization paths for Ethereum, and participated in the formulation of agent economy standards. These changes imply that Ethereum is evolving from a single technical system into a comprehensive infrastructure system encompassing execution, validation, coordination, and fund allocation.

Based on this, this research report will take the core issues currently facing Ethereum as its starting point, systematically review the latest progress in technology, architecture, and ecology, and interpret Ethereum's medium to long-term development direction for the future. At the same time, it will further analyze the strategic direction of the Ethereum Foundation in light of its exploration of funding mechanisms and potential commercialization paths, and assess potential risks it may face during its development, helping you fully understand the logic behind Ethereum's frequent moves.

Author: ShirleyLi, Researcher at Web3Caff Research

Cover: Photo by Unsplash+, Typography by Web3Caff Research

Word Count: Nearly 22,000 words in total

Note: Due to length, this research report is published in two parts. This is Part 1 (including sections: Background, Review of Ethereum's Core Issues). The remaining sections (Detailed Explanation of the Strawmap Draft, Exploring Compliant Commercialization Paths, Market Competition and Risk Assessment, Other Directions Worth Noting, Ethereum Foundation's Support Directions, New Risks the Ethereum Ecosystem May Face, Future Outlook) will be updated and concluded in Part 2.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Review of Ethereum's Core Issues
• Criticism Surrounding the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin
• PoS Technology Improvements
• Blob Capacity Crisis
• A Rollup-Centric Future
• The Battle Over MEV
• Impact from Layer1s like Solana and Sui
• Detailed Explanation of the Strawmap Draft
• Gigagas L1
• Post Quantum L1
• Private L1
• The 7 Upgrades Planned in the Strawmap Draft
• Exploring Compliant Commercialization Paths
• Commercialization Attempts
• Compliance
• Other Directions Worth Noting
• Adjustments to the Gas Mechanism
• From DeFi to Defipunk
• AI
• Ethereum Foundation's Support Directions
• New Risks the Ethereum Ecosystem May Face
• Future Outlook
• Key Structure Diagram
• References

Background

Since Vitalik Buterin and his team formally introduced Ethereum to global users at international conferences in 2014, the network has gone through nearly twelve years of development. From its early niche experiments to becoming a core infrastructure platform hosting a diverse ecosystem, Ethereum has grown into one of the most influential underlying platforms in the Web3 world. However, with the continuous expansion of the ecosystem's scale, this "behemoth" called Ethereum has grown in size, and its pace has become increasingly heavy. Under the harsh law of the jungle, this inherent burden is being amplified by external challengers – it must not only cope with its own operational pressures but also face those eager newcomers.

For Ethereum, "maintaining stability" and "seeking change" have always been two contradictory yet tightly intertwined directions. On one hand, it needs to maintain network stability and ensure the steady progress of the entire ecosystem; on the other hand, it constantly needs to chart new directions for the ecosystem. To this end, Ethereum continuously confirms and revises its development coordinates by publishing phased roadmaps.

Between 2014 and 2016, Ethereum gradually formed an early phased development plan during its progress, divided into four stages: Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity. The first three stages are generally regarded as the Ethereum 1.0 phase, primarily focusing on basic feature completion and network stability improvement. Serenity represents its long-term evolutionary goal, centered on achieving a leap in scalability and performance through the reconstruction of the consensus mechanism and underlying architecture.

In 2020, Ethereum further clarified the technical path for the Serenity phase, formally established the transition to the PoS mechanism, and introduced the concept of sharding, marking the beginning of Ethereum's entry into a systematic architectural reconstruction phase.

In 2022, Ethereum released a relatively complete medium to long-term roadmap, establishing a scaling path centered on Rollups. This meant that Ethereum would shift its execution layer to Layer 2 networks, while the main chain's positioning began to focus on security and data availability. This change laid a new foundation for subsequent ecosystem development but also planted seeds of future problems.

In February 2026, the Ethereum Foundation once again released the "Strawmap" roadmap draft for the next decade, proposing more specific optimization goals for multiple dimensions such as the consensus layer, data layer, and execution layer, further refining the long-term optimization direction of Ethereum, reflecting its ongoing contemplation of the overall architecture's evolution path in its mature stage.

Review of Ethereum's Core Issues

However, the adjustment and refinement of the development path also reflect Ethereum's dynamic trade-offs among multiple objectives like scalability, security, decentralization, and ecological benefit distribution, based on its actual development progress. Each version of the plan or roadmap can be seen as a phased balance of the overall system structure.

In a research report from the end of 2024, "The Future Path of Ethereum: Development Amidst Controversy, Can the Ecological Giant Withstand Potential Crises?", the author discussed some of the problems Ethereum was facing, including:

• Controversy surrounding ecosystem governance and benefit distribution mechanisms;
• During the scaling process, the difficulty of balancing consensus security, validation efficiency, and decentralization;
• Uncertainties in data availability and scaling paths (such as sharding and the Blob mechanism);
• The impact of the Rollup-centric architectural shift on main chain value capture and ecosystem structure;
• The power distribution and ordering mechanisms formed around MEV reshaping the block production system;
• External pressure on Ethereum's performance and ecosystem appeal from competition with high-performance public chains.

So, over a year later, what is the latest progress on these issues? The author will systematically review them in the following sections.

Criticism Surrounding the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin

Since the establishment of the Ethereum Foundation, the team centered around Vitalik Buterin has undergone multiple rounds of personnel changes. Due to Vitalik Buterin's prominent influence in the Ethereum ecosystem, the power structure of the Foundation has long been a subject of external attention and discussion.

Against this backdrop, some believe that certain projects may tend to cater to Vitalik Buterin's technical preferences or the Foundation's funding directions, leading to periodic resource concentration or even overcapacity in specific tracks. At the same time, the distributed nature of the technical teams makes it difficult for Ethereum's overall progress to meet people's expectations for its iteration and innovation speed.

Furthermore, the selling activities of the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin have also sparked market concerns. Although Vitalik Buterin and relevant Foundation members have stated that these funds are primarily used to support ecosystem development and project funding, these actions have still triggered some discussion and interpretation at the market level.

Latest Developments:

In early 2025, as the overall market environment warmed up and new narratives emerged, Ethereum's development pace was relatively slow, which partly fueled community dissatisfaction. Some argued that the Ethereum Foundation and core developers lagged in execution efficiency, market communication, and ecosystem expansion, showing a certain disconnect from the overall industry pace.

In response to these criticisms, the Ethereum Foundation implemented a series of significant adjustments.

In February 2025, Aya Miyaguchi, who had served as the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation since 2018, transitioned to the newly created role of President. Her responsibilities shifted from daily operations and execution management to external collaboration, institutional relations, and cultural communication. At the same time, Nethermind founder Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang jointly took over as Co-Executive Directors.

Under the new management structure, the Ethereum Foundation streamlined its operations, laid off 19 employees, and shifted its strategic focus from Layer 2 back to Layer 1 itself. Concurrently, the Foundation began to place greater emphasis on external communication, further increasing transparency regarding technical roadmaps, development directions, and resource utilization to enhance community trust.

In June 2025, the Ethereum Foundation also restructured its internal R&D system. The original department name was changed from "Protocol Research & Development (PR&D)" to simply "Protocol", aiming to achieve three goals in the short term: scale L1 performance; scale Blobs; and improve user experience. This adjustment marked a shift in its R&D focus from being research-oriented towards engineering implementation and delivery. Early this year, the Protocol team further upgraded its work objectives, explicitly defining them as:

• Scale: Expanding L1 performance by increasing Gas limits, advancing Proposer-Builder Separation, introducing zkEVM to the mainnet, and optimizing the Blob mechanism;
• Improve UX: Enhancing user experience by continuously promoting native account abstraction and cross-chain interoperability;
• Harden the L1: Strengthening L1 security and Censorship Resistance by improving post-quantum security readiness, reducing node burdens, and decreasing reliance on centralized infrastructure.

However, in February 2026, Tomasz Stańczak announced his resignation as Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, to be jointly succeeded by Bastian Aue and Hsiao-Wei Wang. During his tenure, Tomasz Stańczak promoted explorations into areas including privacy protection, quantum computing security, and the integration of AI with Ethereum. After resigning, he planned to dedicate more energy to developing products and infrastructure related to the convergence of AI and blockchain. [1]

Notably, in his resignation statement, Tomasz Stańczak conveyed a mindset of "realizing he was no longer the core driving force and choosing to gracefully pass the baton." This also reflects the gradual decentralization of power within the Ethereum Foundation's governance layer. This change fundamentally reflects the friction and balance between "Ethereum," the decentralized open ecosystem, and the "Ethereum Foundation," the centralized core coordination body. This contradiction actually exists throughout the entire Web3 system and is one of the key issues all projects in the industry must continuously address.

According to the latest internal organizational structure, the board members of the Ethereum Foundation include Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi, Patrick Storchenegger, and Hsiao-Wei Wang. They are primarily responsible for Ethereum's governance and strategic direction adjustments, while execution and operations are handled jointly by the management team and various functional teams. The Ethereum Foundation divides its overall work into several directions based on function, mainly including:

• Protocol Team: Responsible for advancing the design and implementation of Ethereum's underlying protocol, covering multiple sub-fields such as zkEVM, post-quantum, and dAI;
• Privacy Team: Responsible for promoting the research and implementation of on-chain privacy-related technologies, such as private transactions and zero-knowledge proof systems;
• Ecodev Team: Responsible for promoting Ethereum ecosystem construction, including developer support, project incubation, and ecological coordination;
• Ecosystem Unblocking Team: Responsible for facilitating ecosystem development through fund coordination, research support, and public goods infrastructure construction;
• Operations Team: Responsible for the daily functioning of the organization, including finance, legal, human resources, and internal management.

Source: Ethereum Foundation

Meanwhile, to adapt to changes in the ecosystem's development stage and resource allocation needs, the Ethereum Foundation also made a key adjustment to its grant system in August 2025, pausing the open grant program that had been running since 2018. It relaunched the new Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) in November. After the adjustment, the fund allocation model shifted from "passive application processing" to "active guidance." The initial funding directions covered areas such as cryptography, privacy, application layer, security, and community growth. Additionally, the Foundation decided to reduce its annual spending rate from approximately 15% to 5% to slow the depletion of its ETH reserves. [2] This adjustment marks the Ethereum Foundation's shift from a broad-coverage ecosystem funding model to a more refined resource allocation strategy focused on infrastructure and core technologies.

In May of this year, Ethereum Foundation researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma announced their resignations one after another, while former EF researcher Dankrad Feist even publicly stated that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to establish a new organization more aligned with Ethereum's economic interests to "save" Ethereum. In response, Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin both stated that these controversies essentially reflect the friction between Ethereum's "long-term technology building" orientation and the current commercialization process, but this is a necessary "growing pain" phase in the development process.

PoS Technology Improvements

While transitioning to the Proof-of-Stake mechanism allowed Ethereum to say goodbye to the high energy consumption consensus model, the 32 ETH staking threshold inadvertently raised the barrier to entry for validators, potentially triggering a risk of validation power centralization. To lower the staking threshold for individual validators, a key challenge becomes how to reduce the communication and coordination costs for the network to reach consensus and increase the cost of malicious attacks as the number of validators grows.

To address this, Vitalik Buterin proposed enhancing network security by increasing the participation ratio required for block finality (e.g., from the current ~2/3 threshold signature to 75% or higher). [3] The core idea is to hedge potential security risks by raising the consensus threshold, potentially balancing decentralization and security.

Latest Developments:

In May 2025, the Pectra upgrade was activated on the Ethereum mainnet.

In this upgrade, EIP-7251 raised the maximum effective balance cap for validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. Note that 32 ETH remains the minimum staking requirement to become a validator. The main effect of this proposal is to increase the maximum consensus weight a single validator can represent, meaning one validator can directly represent more ETH in voting. Through this adjustment, large stakers no longer need to split their stake across multiple validator nodes to receive corresponding incentives, thereby reducing the number of validator nodes controlled by the same entity, and consequently lowering the communication and coordination overhead among nodes in the global consensus process.

EIP-7002 optimized the staking withdrawal mechanism. This proposal introduced an execution layer-triggered withdrawal method, allowing stakers to complete withdrawals under specific conditions without requiring the active signature of the validator. This mechanism helps enhance stakers' control over their assets, reduces the complexity of entering and exiting staking operations, and further improves the overall flexibility of the PoS system.

Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation explored applying Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) to optimize the staking structure. This technology essentially reduces the risk of a single point of failure by splitting the private key and signing capabilities of a single validator across multiple nodes for collaborative execution. In traditional models, the system has high requirements for the stability and private key management of validator nodes. Under the multi-node collaboration model, validation duties are shared, helping to lower the requirements for the continuous online availability and operational capabilities of any single node. However,