Ethereum is moving beyond the Satoshi era, as Vitalik envisions a "crypto world computer" for 2030

Original title:The cryptographic world computer; Original author: Vitalik

Compiled by Odaily (@OdailyChina); Translator: Asher (@Asher_ 0210)

We often call Ethereum a "blockchain," and this label easily gives the impression that it is essentially the same technology as the Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto created in 2009. In many ways, that's true—even the future "Lean Ethereum" built along the Strawmap roadmap will still retain some basic characteristics of a blockchain.

But over the past fifteen years, this technology has changed significantly, and it will continue to evolve over the next three years. Ethereum may be heading toward a system that is fundamentally different from the early blockchain.

Today's Ethereum supports general-purpose computation and uses proof of stake. There are already applications on-chain using zero-knowledge proofs, and L2s are providing scaling and privacy protection. The Ethereum of the future will be able to choose between extremely large-scale computation and fully general-purpose computing power depending on application needs; blocks can be jointly built by multiple parties in various ways; proof of stake will be further optimized; and zero-knowledge proofs will play a key role at the base layer.

Looking at the Bitcoin whitepaper, what has Ethereum changed?

Looking back at the original Bitcoin whitepaper and comparing it section by section with Ethereum in 2015, 2025, and the envisioned 2030, nearly every part has undergone major changes.

Take transaction authorization as an example. Early blockchains relied mainly on signatures, while the future may also use quantum-resistant signatures or zero-knowledge proofs. Verifying blocks no longer necessarily requires downloading all data and re-executing all computations; instead, data availability can be checked through PeerDAS, and then SNARKs can be verified. The process by which transactions enter blocks, the way computation and storage are handled, and what light clients can verify on their own are all very different from the early blockchain.

Almost all the core attributes that define a "blockchain" have already changed, or are about to change:

• Verification method: from downloading blocks and re-executing, to sampling through PeerDAS and verifying SNARKs;
• Consensus mechanism: from PoW to PoS, and then to a more highly optimized PoS;
• Block-building rights: from a single miner building blocks, to multi-party participation in block building.

Therefore, after completing the Lean upgrade, Ethereum is still called a "blockchain" largely just because it continues the historical name. It retains the core ideas proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto, while also making use of cryptographic tools developed through academic research over the past fifty years. These tools did not exist in 2009, or were not yet mature.

Cryptography is not the only important discipline. Formal verification, database theory, peer-to-peer networking, information theory, and economics also play a role. However, advances in these fields have not changed the basic process of the early blockchain. Everyone tries to generate the next block that meets the PoW rules; once someone succeeds, they broadcast the block, others download and re-execute it, and the cycle repeats. The development of cryptography, however, is changing this process itself.

What do users get, and what do developers need to change?

These technological changes will also alter the trade-offs users face when using the Ethereum network.

The Ethereum network of 2015 could run continuously, resist transaction censorship, ensure that transactions execute according to pre-written rules, and make transactions irreversible. But these guarantees came with high costs. The network's privacy capabilities were limited, and confirming transactions took time. If users wanted to verify things themselves, they had to run a fairly powerful node; otherwise, they had to trust others.

The envisioned Ethereum network of 2030 will retain these guarantees and further ensure that transactions enter blocks in real time through FOCIL. In some scenarios, the privacy protection it provides may be stronger than that of servers. However, general-purpose computation is still expensive, and it is also difficult to fully protect privacy. Many specialized computations can be much cheaper, and many specialized applications can also provide stronger privacy protection.

Transaction confirmation will still take time. In 2015, the Ethereum network produced a block about every 17 seconds, and waiting for 12 confirmations took about 200 seconds. By 2030, a single slot may be shortened to about 4–8 seconds, and reaching finality may take about 8–32 seconds. Users will still need to run their own nodes to obtain the fullest verification guarantees, but the requirements for running a node will be much lower.

At the same time, the way developers organize computation will directly affect application costs. In the early blockchain, the same amount of data and computation usually meant similar overhead. The future will be different: if all operations are crammed into a single transaction that can only be executed serially, the cost will be high; if the dependencies among steps are clarified so that they can be processed in parallel, or aggregated before entering the final block, the cost can be reduced.

This will gradually change the design of Ethereum applications. In the long run, perhaps only information involving state changes and their execution order—information that must be handled by the blockchain—will need to go on-chain. Other content can be aggregated in advance, allowing the blockchain to focus more on its own job.

Decentralization can also become a performance advantage

Perhaps the most important change is that the network's decentralization is no longer just a cost borne for security and robustness. In a few cases, it can also become a performance advantage. A decentralized network can store more data in parallel and can also complete large amounts of computation in parallel, much of which can take place in the mempool. In some cases, it can also enhance privacy, because only a decentralized network can effectively hide information such as where data and requests come from.

This was once Ethereum's vision in the mid-2010s. Decentralization should not only be used to improve the robustness of the system; it should also help the system scale. Since centralized systems can improve performance by distributing work among different participants, decentralized systems should be able to do so as well.

The key missing condition at the time was verification. After distributing work, it was necessary to confirm that each part had been completed correctly. Early designs tried using randomly selected committees, but establishing committees was complex, costly, and significantly increased latency; if the committee failed in its duties, there was also no remedy. Today, modern cryptography has solved this problem, and the additional overhead brought by related schemes is also declining month by month.

Latency is another area worth watching. Ethereum's own latency will never be comparable to that of a server, but the infrastructure built around it perhaps can be. Overall, if a stronger decentralized layer can be established between users and the chain, and this layer itself is not a chain, then Ethereum may gain stronger capabilities without harming the chain's basic properties.

From blockchain to "cryptographic world computer"

Looking further ahead, Ethereum may also see another change, namely the rise of obfuscation technology (iO). Ideally, usable obfuscation technology could eliminate the trade-off between privacy and generality, allowing an unlimited number of participants to engage in general-purpose computation in a secure and encrypted way. Even weaker forms of obfuscation technology could be used in scenarios such as encrypted mempools. However, the changes discussed earlier in this article do not need to wait for this technology to mature before they occur.

This is the "cryptographic world computer." Ethereum will no longer be just a ledger on which people place data and computation for execution, but will become an architecture combining blockchain, cryptographic privacy and verification technologies, and powerful decentralized off-chain components.

There are still many challenges to fully building such a system. Making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and secure enough is not easy, but the scope of this problem is relatively clear, and it is already being continuously optimized with the help of AI tools. The harder, system-wide problem may be how to manage massive state and allow different participants to access that state in parallel. Related proposals have already emerged, but they still need to be continuously refined as the needs of future applications gradually become clearer.

From the Strawmap roadmap, the Hegota fork planned for next year may be Ethereum's last "regular" fork. The features and technologies it adopts would still be roughly recognizable to someone from 2015. The work after that will involve recursive STARKs, automated formal verification, highly optimized consensus algorithms, and making all of this quantum-resistant.

PeerDAS has already initiated Ethereum's transformation from a mere blockchain into a more powerful system. After Hegota, this transformation will become the main line of Ethereum's development. Ultimately, Ethereum is expected to provide highly secure computation that is cheaper, larger in scale, and more private than in the past.