Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says new privacy and data-handling technologies have effectively overcome the network’s long-standing scalability limits, though a full security rollout could take several more years.
In a January 3 post on X, Buterin argued that Ethereum’s adoption of zero-knowledge virtual machines (ZK-EVMs), combined with a data distribution technique called PeerDAS, marks a fundamental shift in how the blockchain operates.
“These are not minor improvements; they are shifting Ethereum into being a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network,” he wrote.
According to Buterin, the combination of ZK-EVMs and data-availability sampling resolves the so-called “Blockchain Trilemma” — the long-held belief that decentralization, security, and high throughput cannot all be achieved at once.
He compared Ethereum’s emerging architecture to “BitTorrent with consensus,” contrasting it with Bitcoin’s design, which he said favors decentralization but offers limited data capacity. With the upgrades, Ethereum could handle data volumes similar to large file-sharing networks while preserving the guarantees of a decentralized ledger.
“The trilemma has been solved – not on paper, but with live running code, of which one half (data availability sampling) is on mainnet today, and the other half (ZK-EVMs) is production-quality on performance today – safety is what remains,” Buterin claimed.
Despite the progress, Buterin emphasized that security hardening will take time. He estimated that ZK-EVMs will not become Ethereum’s primary method for validating blocks until roughly 2027 to 2030. Once fully deployed, these systems are expected to verify transactions more quickly and cheaply, using zero-knowledge proofs to avoid exposing underlying user data.
In the meantime, Ethereum plans to roll out incremental upgrades. Buterin expects a gas limit increase this year, enabled by protocol changes that further separate transaction proposers from block builders and raise the amount of work each block can process.
Longer term, he described a goal of “distributed block building,” where no single party assembles an entire block of transactions. Spreading this role across multiple actors is intended to reduce censorship risks and avoid concentration of power in any one region or operator.
“A long-term ideal holy grail is to get to a future where the full block is never constituted in one single place,” he wrote, adding that while such a system may not be necessary soon, it is a target worth preparing for.
The strategic shift comes as Ethereum faces pressure from newer blockchains that offer lower fees and faster confirmation times. Those rivals have intensified scrutiny on Ethereum’s roadmap and the pace at which it can deliver next-generation scaling features in production.