Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum is No Longer Just a Blockchain
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "The cryptographic world computer," stating that over the next few years, Ethereum will evolve into a hybrid system fundamentally different from traditional blockchain architecture: combining ledgers with modern cryptography and off-chain computation.
He wrote that the current network already has general computing, PoS, zero-knowledge proofs, and L2 scaling; the next steps include adjustable computing architecture, multi-party block construction, highly optimized PoS, and deeply integrated zero-knowledge proofs in the base layer. By around 2030, validation will shift from re-downloading and executing blocks to SNARK validation plus PeerDAS sampling for data availability; consensus will move towards finality with fewer slots; block construction will change from a single entity to multi-party participation.
The article compares 2010 and 2030: authorization will expand from ordinary signatures to quantum-resistant signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, the standard chain will shift from PoW to optimized PoS with usable chains, and signatures will be aggregated off-chain, with only one per block. He predicts that by 2030, slots will be approximately 4 to 8 seconds, and finality will be around 8 to 32 seconds. Decentralized networks will no longer only incur costs for security and censorship resistance but can also enhance performance through parallel storage, parallel computing, and privacy protection.
On the roadmap, the planned Hegota fork next year is referred to as likely the last "traditional" hard fork, with technologies and features still recognizable by developers from 2015. After Hegota, the main line will shift to recursive STARK, automated formal verification, optimized consensus, and full quantum resistance. The foundation's public timeline sets the goals for quantum-resistant execution layer, consensus layer, and data layer by December 2029.
PeerDAS has entered the mainnet with Fusaka, currently used for sampling blobs, with plans to cover complete block content in the future. The Hegota consensus layer headlines include FOCIL, which allocates transaction rights to a validator committee; subsequent upgrades increasingly resemble replacing protocol components with provable, sampleable, quantum-resistant modules rather than "function-enhancing conventional forks."
In market mechanisms, buyers are ETH holders, L2, and staking funds that integrate the "verification layer" narrative into valuations, while sellers are funds that still price public chains based on traditional L1 throughput. Funding shifts from the full node re-execution cost to proof generation, data sampling, and formal verification toolchains. Beneficiaries include infrastructure capable of generating proofs, sampling nodes, and being included in censorship-resistant lists, while those under pressure are old client paths that require downloading the full state for self-verification. The event-driven narrative shifts from "the next fork" to "architectural evolution" after Hegota.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Vitalik has evolved from the "world computer" slogan of 2013-2015 to the 2022 Merge, and now to the 2025-2026 Lean Ethereum strawmap, this time renaming it to "cryptographic world computer," acknowledging that the simple ledger narrative can no longer accommodate proofs, sampling, and off-chain computation. Hegota is written as the last fork that 2015 developers can understand, marking a political end to the core development schedule: beyond this, the subject of EIPs will no longer be gas and precompiles, but recursive proofs and quantum-resistant replacements.
The capital path is not about issuing new coins but about shifting the network's validation cost from "every node re-running transactions" to "a few generating proofs and many sampling validations." Resource flow is directed towards proof hardware, PeerDAS bandwidth, FOCIL inclusion lists, and quantum-safe signature migration. The motivation is to achieve throughput without handing over validation rights to super-large nodes or centralized sorters; the strategy is to make Ethereum a verification layer for other computations rather than cramming all computations into blocks.
Similar shifts include Bitcoin moving from downloading the full chain to SPV, Ethereum from PoW to PoS, and rollups pushing execution out of L1. The industry position is entering a control phase: expansion relies on L2, and the base layer shifts to define who has the right to prove, who has the right to sample, and who cannot have their transactions censored. The transformation is not yet complete, as the scope of Hegota is not locked down, and the mainnet for recursive STARK remains an engineering project rather than a product.
Structural judgments belong to technological substitution. Heavy re-execution is replaced by short proofs, single builders are replaced by multi-party inclusion lists, and elliptic curve assumptions are replaced by hash-based STARKs and quantum-resistant signatures. The mechanism is: when proofs are cheaper than replays and sampling is cheaper than downloads, full nodes are no longer the only secure form, and pricing power shifts from "who can run the full client" to "who can generate and aggregate proofs."
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
The last traditional upgrade often marks the boundary of the next era.
Verification becomes cheaper, allowing computation to leave the main chain.
The next step for the world computer is to prove that others have computed correctly.