Vitalik Buterin believes Ethereum is on the verge of solving the blockchain trilemma through the combined power of ZK-EVM and PeerDAS. As ZK-EVM reaches alpha with production-grade performance and PeerDAS becomes active on mainnet, Ethereum is no longer making incremental improvements—it is undergoing a fundamental architectural transformation.
Historically, decentralized systems have been forced to compromise. BitTorrent delivered massive bandwidth without consensus, while Bitcoin achieved decentralization and consensus at the cost of scalability. Ethereum, however, is now positioned to break this trade-off entirely.
With PeerDAS enabling scalable data availability and ZK-EVM unlocking efficient, verifiable execution, Ethereum can simultaneously offer decentralization, consensus, and high throughput. Crucially, this is not a theoretical breakthrough—key components are already live on mainnet, with the remaining pieces nearing production readiness.
Vitalik expects this vision to roll out progressively over the next few years. Starting in 2026, gas limits will expand independently of ZK-EVM constraints, and running ZK-EVM nodes will become viable. Between 2026 and 2028, Ethereum will further refine gas pricing and network structure, cementing its position as a fully scalable and decentralized base layer.
