Ethereum Technology Development Roadmap: Potential Breakthroughs in the Next Two Years

Ethereum, as a leading blockchain platform, has garnered significant attention for its technological development. According to the latest technical roadmap, several major technological breakthroughs may occur in the next two years, which are expected to provide strong support for the value of Ethereum.

1. zkEVM Integration into the Main Chain

It is expected that zkEVM technology will be integrated into the Ethereum main chain between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. This upgrade aims to achieve 99% of blocks being verified within 10 seconds, while reducing the verification cost of zero-knowledge proofs by 80%.

The significance of this technological breakthrough is immense:

• The market share of major stablecoins on the Ethereum main chain may further expand, thereby increasing daily Gas consumption and driving ETH deflation.
• Zero-knowledge proof technology provides compliance and privacy protection for traditional financial institutions, potentially activating large-scale institutional DeFi application scenarios.

2. Introduction of RISC-V Execution Architecture

Starting from the second half of 2025, the development of the new RISC-V execution architecture, which is expected to be phased in between 2026 and 2030, will bring significant performance improvements to Ethereum:

• The execution efficiency of smart contracts is expected to increase by 3-5 times.
• Gas costs are expected to decrease by 50-70%.
• The open-source instruction set architecture will replace the current EVM, better accommodating modern hardware acceleration technologies.

The significance of this upgrade includes:

• The significant improvement in performance will give rise to new application scenarios, such as high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, and microtransactions.
• Lower Gas costs may reactivate small transaction scenarios, expanding the user base and usage frequency, creating a virtuous cycle of ETH demand.

3. Main Chain and Layer Two Network Ecosystem Collaboration

The plan is to start in the fourth quarter of 2025, continuing to optimize the main chain in coordination with the second-layer network in 2026-2027, aiming to achieve the following goals:

• The main chain and the primary Layer 2 networks achieve seamless interoperability.
• The total locked value (TVL) of the unified liquidity pool is expected to exceed 200 billion USD.
• Cross-layer transaction costs reduced by 90%, achieving cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds.

This development will significantly enhance the capital efficiency and user experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, creating powerful network effects.

4. Optimizing the Validator Economic Model

Starting from the second half of 2025, the optimization of the validator economic model, which will be carried out in conjunction with various technical upgrades, is expected to continue for 2 years. The main objectives include:

• Gradually lower the minimum staking threshold for validators, potentially from 32 ETH down to 1 ETH.
• Increase the annualized yield of staking to 6-8%.
• Simplify validator operation requirements, support lightweight node verification, and enhance the decentralization of the network.

These changes may have the following impacts:

• The ETH staking rate is expected to increase from the current approximately 25% to over 40%, further reducing the circulating supply of Ether and strengthening deflationary expectations.
• The enhancement of staking rewards will increase the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond," providing fundamental support for its valuation.

5. The Return of Sharding Technology (ETH 3.0)

Although the timeline is distant, it is expected that design and research will start in 2026, and it may be realized in 2027-2028 or even further in the future. The return of sharding technology is still an important development direction worth paying attention to.

• By combining zkEVM and sharding technology, the goal is to achieve millions of transactions per second.
• The cost of data availability is expected to decrease by 99%.
• Blockchain data will be distributed across multiple shards, and validators only need to process part of the data.

The reintroduction of sharding technology indicates that Ethereum is preparing for large-scale Web3 applications for the next decade, and the vision of the "world computer" may once again become a focus of development.

These potential technological breakthroughs showcase Ethereum's commitment to continuous innovation and optimization, which is expected to lay a solid foundation for its long-term development.