More focused and pragmatic, Ethereum’s new vision

Ethereum is undergoing a strategic shift with new leadership focusing on transparency, engagement, and value capture at the L1 level, aiming to realign with its core cryptographic principles of privacy and trustlessness.
Key goals include maintaining Ethereum as the most secure and resilient blockchain, improving communication of its security features, and ensuring technical developments uphold its core values without compromise.
The Ethereum Foundation plans a more active role, including a new funding policy to support efficient DeFi protocols and strategic allocations, moving from passive to guided management.
Major challenges addressed include regulatory clarity, AI adoption, privacy issues, and institutional adoption, with a vision to modularize industries, open-source solutions, and remove intermediaries for seamless Web2 to Web3 transitions.
Focus areas for the future include solving on-chain privacy and identity challenges, establishing Ethereum as a trusted layer for AI execution, and fostering global participation to resist centralization.
The foundation emphasizes collaboration between L1 and L2, aiming to guide L2s to Phase 2 while leveraging Ethereum as the secure base layer, and addressing interoperability with emerging high-speed blockchains like MegaETH.
Technical targets include increasing block gas limits to 100 million, modular team efforts for L1 expansion, blob scaling, UX improvements, and enhanced interoperability, signaling a renewed focus on Ethereum’s foundational infrastructure.

Author: francesco

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Preface

Ethereum has been at a crossroads over the past few years.

The growing criticism has led to a change in foundation leadership and is expected to lead to a broader review to increase transparency and engagement, and a greater focus on value capture at the L1 level.

Previously, it was rare to see an Executive Director speaking on multiple panels at Ethereum conferences. This week, I was happy to see Tomasz K. Stańczak (Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation) participating in as many events and panels as possible.

This is really refreshing and hopefully a sign of things to come.

So…what is Ethereum’s future vision?

How do we ensure this vision is well executed?

This article provides an overview of the Ethereum vision.

Target

To have a structured vision, you must start with goals.

For Ethereum, the main goals are as follows:

1. Return to the spirit of encryption, how to protect privacy and trustless features.

It’s not just about attracting new users, but making sure they can tap into those values and ethos, and build accordingly.

Build, yes, but with purpose and values.

2. Ensure that Ethereum remains the most secure and resilient blockchain infrastructure.

This echoes Vitalik’s post about “A Trillion Dollar Safe.”

This is part of a broader discussion about security:

How to improve the security of Ethereum?
How do you adequately communicate this to your users?
How can we ensure that both institutions and users can take full advantage of this?

Most importantly:

How do we ensure that all technical developments continue to uphold the core spirit and values of Ethereum? No shortcuts, no compromises.

Lately, many have accused Ethereum of being somewhat alienated from the developers.

However, that seems to be about to change.

In fact, we can expect the Ethereum Foundation to take a slightly more active approach and develop a new funding policy. Thomas said this will be used to explore efficient and durable DeFi protocols and strategically allocate funds to them, moving from a passive approach to guided management.

This is just one of a number of challenges that will have a profound impact on Ethereum’s long-term future, including:

Regulatory clarity
AI adoption
Privacy issues

One key aspect and major recent trend is the increase in institutional adoption.

Ethereum’s future vision is to treat various fields and industries as modular components, make them open source and remove intermediaries.

In turn, these modules will ensure a smooth transition from Web2 to Web3, removing friction between institutions.

Imagine that health institutions in different countries are able to open and contribute to health data repositories. All of this is secured through interactions on the Ethereum chain, guaranteeing the security and verifiability of these solutions.

The ultimate goal? Allowing users to trade all global assets on-chain.

challenge

However, to achieve this goal, Ethereum needs to solve some major challenges and confusions faced by users.

Therefore, the focus going forward will be on solving some of the major challenges in on-chain privacy and identity, and addressing the threats of AI by establishing Ethereum as a trusted layer for AI execution.

Trustworthy and neutral.
Globalization.
Private and secure by design.

All of this will create a diverse environment and build a social structure that enables different actors to collaborate, with the ultimate goal of making Ethereum an anti-fragile network.

To truly resist centralization, it is necessary to ensure global participation and incorporate multiple voices and approaches to build a truly global network.

This will allow Ethereum to listen to important issues and empower pluralism and diversity.

It was also refreshing to hear about the tension between L1 and L2, with the Ethereum Foundation making it clear that there is no opposition between them.

Instead, Ethereum will take a more active role in guiding how to ensure these L2s reach Phase 2, protecting users through Ethereum as the underlying base layer.

Last but not least, we are seeing the emergence of live blockchains like MegaETH, as well as other fast networks like Monad and Hyperliquid.

This also raises questions about interoperability and integration:

How do I ensure they are connected to the Ethereum mainnet?
How to build a 25 ms block time blockchain that inherits Ethereum's security parameters?

Therefore, new tools need to be introduced to verify at which layers new challenges can be identified and ensure that clients are able to integrate with these networks.

This opens up a new creative space for client development.

All Ethereum client teams agree that each block will consume 45 million or even 60 million Gas, with the goal of reaching 100 million Gas by the end of this year or the first quarter of next year.

This will be achieved through an internal reorganization, with modular teams working towards common goals: