2026 以太坊未來發展前瞻 2.2 萬字研報（上篇）：從「基礎設施」到「生態中心」還有多遠？

As one of the most important smart contract platforms today, Ethereum has built the richest on-chain ecosystem and continues to lead the development direction of Web3 technological innovation. However, as the ecosystem scales, a series of problems accumulated in Ethereum's underlying architecture and development path are gradually emerging and becoming more complex. For example, there are still controversies over ecological governance and benefit distribution mechanisms; during the scaling process, it is difficult to balance consensus security, verification efficiency, and decentralization; uncertainties remain in data availability and scaling paths (such as sharding and Blob mechanisms); the Rollup-centric architectural transformation impacts the main chain's value capture and ecosystem structure; the power distribution and sequencing mechanisms around MEV are reshaping the block production system; and competition from high-performance public chains creates external pressure on Ethereum's performance and ecological 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, such as restructuring the foundation's organizational structure, clarifying the responsibilities of the Protocol team, redefining the functions of L1 and L2, adjusting the foundation's positioning within the ecosystem, exploring monetization paths for Ethereum, and participating in the formulation of agent economy standards, among others. This series of changes means that Ethereum is gradually evolving from a single technological system into a comprehensive infrastructure system encompassing execution, verification, coordination, and fund allocation.

Based on this, this report will take the core issues currently facing Ethereum as a starting point, systematically review its latest progress in technology, architecture, and ecosystem, and interpret Ethereum's medium-to-long-term development direction. At the same time, it will also analyze the strategic direction of the Ethereum Foundation based on its exploration of funding mechanisms and potential commercialization paths, and assess the potential risks that may arise during its development, to help 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

Note: Due to space constraints, this report is published in two parts. This is the first part (including sections: Background, Review of Core Ethereum Issues). The remaining sections (Detailed Explanation of the Strawmap Draft, Exploring Compliant Commercialization Paths, Market Competition and Risk Assessment, Other Notable Directions, Ethereum Foundation's Support Direction, New Risks the Ethereum Ecosystem May Face, Future Outlook) will be completed and published in the second part.

Table of Contents

• Background
• Review of Core Ethereum Issues
• Questions Surrounding the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin
• PoS Technology Improvements
• Blob Capacity Crunch
• A Rollup-Centric Future
• The Battle for MEV
• Competition from Layer 1s like Solana and Sui
• Detailed Explanation of the Strawmap Draft
• Gigagas L1
• Post Quantum L1
• Private L1
• Seven Upgrades Planned in the Strawmap Draft
• Exploring Compliant Commercialization Paths
• Commercialization Attempts
• Compliance
• Other Notable Directions
• Gas Mechanism Adjustments
• From DeFi to Defipunk
• AI
• Ethereum Foundation's Support Direction
• New Risks the Ethereum Ecosystem May Face
• Future Outlook
• Key Points Structure Diagram
• References

Background

Since Vitalik Buterin and his team formally introduced Ethereum to global users at an international conference in 2014, the network has gone through nearly twelve years of development. From an early niche experiment to the core infrastructure supporting a diverse ecosystem today, Ethereum has grown into one of the most influential underlying platforms in the Web3 world. However, as the ecosystem continues to expand, the 'giant' that is Ethereum is becoming increasingly large, and its pace is becoming heavier. Under the harsh law of the jungle, this inherent burden is constantly amplified by external challengers — it must not only cope with its own operational pressures but also confront those eager newcomers.

For Ethereum, 'maintaining stability' and 'seeking change' are always contradictory yet closely intertwined directions. On the 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, divided into four stages: Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity. The first three stages are generally considered Ethereum 1.0, focusing on basic function improvement and network stability enhancement. Serenity represents its long-term evolution goal, centered on achieving a leap in scalability and performance through a reconstruction of the consensus mechanism and underlying architecture.

In 2020, Ethereum further clarified the technical path for the Serenity stage, formally establishing the transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism and introducing sharding logic, marking the beginning of Ethereum's entry into a phase of systematic architectural reconstruction.

In 2022, Ethereum released a relatively complete medium-to-long-term roadmap, establishing the Rollup-centric scaling path. This meant that Ethereum shifted its execution layer to Layer 2 networks, while the main chain's positioning began to focus on security and data availability. This change set a new tone for subsequent ecosystem development but also laid the groundwork for potential problems.

In February 2026, the Ethereum Foundation released another 'Strawmap' roadmap draft for the next ten years, proposing more specific optimization goals for the consensus layer, data layer, execution layer, and other dimensions. This further refined Ethereum's long-term optimization direction, reflecting the network's continued thinking on the direction of overall architecture evolution in its mature stage.

Review of Core Ethereum Issues

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

In a report from late 2024 titled 'Ethereum's Future Path: Development Amid Controversy, Can the Ecosystem Giant Withstand Potential Crises?', the author discussed some of the problems Ethereum was facing, including:

• Controversies over ecological governance and benefit distribution mechanisms;
• Difficulty balancing consensus security, verification efficiency, and decentralization during scaling;
• Uncertainties in data availability and scaling paths (e.g., sharding and Blob mechanisms);
• Impact of the Rollup-centric architectural shift on the main chain's value capture and ecosystem structure;
• The power distribution and sequencing mechanisms 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 review them one by one in the following content.

Questions 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 also been subject to long-term external attention and discussion.

In this context, some believe that certain projects may tend to align with 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 advancement speed to meet people's expectations for its iteration and innovation.

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

Latest Progress:

In early 2025, as the overall market environment recovered and new narratives emerged, Ethereum's development pace was relatively slow, which also triggered dissatisfaction within the community to some extent. Some believed that the Ethereum Foundation and core developers were lagging in terms of progress efficiency, market communication, and ecosystem expansion, showing a certain disconnect from the industry's overall rhythm.

In response to this skepticism, the Ethereum Foundation made a series of important adjustments.

In February 2025, Aya Miyaguchi, who had served as the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation since 2018, transitioned to the newly established role of President. Her responsibilities shifted from daily operations and executive management to external partnerships, institutional relations, and cultural dissemination. 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 organization, laying off 19 employees and shifting its strategic focus from Layer 2 back to Layer 1 itself. At the same time, the foundation began to place greater emphasis on external communication, further increasing transparency in technical direction, development strategy, and resource utilization to build community trust.

In June 2025, the Ethereum Foundation also restructured its internal R&D system. The original department name 'Protocol Research & Development (PR&D)' was simplified to '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 to engineering delivery and practical deployment. Earlier this year, the Protocol team further upgraded its work objectives, specifically defining them as:

• Scale: Expanding L1 performance by raising the gas limit, advancing Proposer-Builder Separation, introducing zkEVM on the mainnet, and optimizing the Blob mechanism;
• Improve UX: Enhancing user experience by continuously advancing native account abstraction and cross-chain interoperability;
• Harden the L1: Strengthening L1 security and censorship resistance by enhancing post-quantum preparedness, reducing node burden, and weakening reliance on centralized infrastructure.

However, in February 2026, Tomasz Stańczak announced his resignation as Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, with Bastian Aue and Hsiao-Wei Wang jointly succeeding him. During his tenure, Tomasz Stańczak promoted exploration in areas including privacy protection, quantum computing security, and the integration of AI with Ethereum. After stepping down, he plans to focus more on building products and infrastructure related to the convergence of AI and blockchain. [1]

Notably, Tomasz Stańczak's resignation statement expressed a sentiment of 'realizing he was no longer the core driving force, so it was better to gracefully pass the baton'. This reflects the gradual decentralization of power within the Ethereum Foundation's governance layer. This change essentially embodies the friction and balance between the decentralized open ecosystem called 'Ethereum' and the centralized core coordinating body called the 'Ethereum Foundation'. This contradiction actually exists throughout the entire Web3 ecosystem and is one of the critical issues that all projects in the industry must continuously face.

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

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

Source: Ethereum Foundation

At the same time, to adapt to changes in the ecosystem 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, and relaunching a new Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) in November. After the adjustment, the fund allocation model shifted from 'passive application processing' to 'active guidance'. Its initial funding directions covered areas like cryptography, privacy, application layer, security, and community growth. At the same time, the foundation decided to reduce its annual capital expenditure rate from about 15% to 5% to slow down the depletion rate of its ETH reserves. [2] This adjustment marks a shift for the Ethereum Foundation 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 departures, and former Ethereum Foundation 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 responded, both indicating 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 phase of 'growing pains' in the development process.

PoS Technology Improvements

The transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism allowed Ethereum to say goodbye to the energy-intensive consensus model. However, the 32 ETH staking threshold inadvertently raised the barrier to entry for validators, also inducing a degree of centralization risk for validation rights. To lower the staking threshold for individual validators while increasing their number, reducing the communication and coordination costs for network consensus and increasing the attack cost for malicious behavior become critical issues.

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

Latest Progress:

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

In this upgrade, EIP-7251 increased the maximum effective balance cap for validators from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH. It is important to note that 32 ETH remains the minimum staking threshold to become a validator. The main effect of this proposal is to increase the upper limit of 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, thus helping to reduce the situation where the same entity controls multiple validator nodes, and thereby lowering the communication and coordination overhead among nodes during the network-wide consensus process.

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

Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation is exploring the application of 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 completion. In the traditional model, the system has high requirements for the stability of validator nodes and private key management. In a multi-node collaboration model, validation duties are shared by multiple nodes, which helps lower the requirements for a single node's continuous upt