Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled a long-term architectural overhaul aimed at evolving Ethereum by 2030 into a cryptographic world computer that combines blockchain technology with modern cryptography. The plan envisions a shift beyond the limitations of a simple distributed-ledger recording system toward hybrid infrastructure encompassing advanced mathematical proofs and off-chain computation.
Under the blueprint, the Hegota upgrade, scheduled for next year, is expected to be the last hard fork conducted under the existing approach. After Hegota, a network-wide redesign will begin in earnest around advanced technologies including recursive STARKs, automated formal verification and post-quantum cryptography. The network will move away from the current model, in which every validator reruns all data individually, and combine peer data availability sampling with zero-knowledge-proof verification to maximize processing speed and scalability.
By around 2030, when the transition is complete, block intervals are expected to fall from 4 seconds to between 4 and 8 seconds, while the time required for transaction finality is projected to be significantly reduced from 8 seconds to approximately 8–32 seconds. The plan also calls for applying parallel data-processing computation and off-chain signature aggregation across the protocol to increase transaction capacity while further strengthening users’ transaction privacy protections.
Buterin expects the approach to overcome the performance degradation that decentralized networks have traditionally borne in exchange for security and censorship resistance. He said the network could establish itself as a powerful execution environment that directly improves its own performance and scalability by actively using the parallel storage and concurrent computation capabilities characteristic of distributed environments.