Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang used the metaphor “Ethereum is a ladder” to describe the ecosystem’s evolution over the past decade, and now, this ladder is leading the blockchain world toward a freer, more open, and collaborative future.
At the recently held Ethereum Devconnect developer conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shifted from his usual focus on technical details to discuss, from a more macro perspective, the “existential value” of Ethereum.
Ethereum is completing its coming-of-age ceremony. Since the mainnet launch in 2015, over the past ten years, Ethereum has shifted from basic infrastructure construction to defining its on-chain influence. As Vitalik said in his keynote: “Ethereum can become a banner, leading a freer, more open, and collaborative world supported by permissionless open technology and decentralized security.”
1. Shift in Mindset: From Technology-Driven to Value Exploration
Vitalik’s keynote framework is shifting from a purely technical blueprint to deeper principled reflection.
● Comparing the content of his 2024 and 2025 speeches, this shift is particularly evident. Last year, he mainly focused on the technical details of the “world computer,” explaining in detail how L1 serves as a trust anchor and how L2s function as complementary GPUs.
● At that time, he emphasized: “The reason Ethereum’s world computer can unite is that every GPU is connected to the most trusted machine through optimistic proof systems, zero-knowledge proofs, SNARKs, STARKs, Jolt, Plonk, and various other technologies.”
● This year, however, Vitalik opened by using FTX as a negative example, criticizing its lack of solvency as a centralized exchange, emphasizing the essential difference between Ethereum and centralized trust mechanisms.
He broadly incorporated cryptographic tools such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, and introduced the concept of “cosmolocal” (local-global), explaining that Ethereum is a global network, not designed to please any particular company or superpower.
2. Governance Philosophy: Ladder Compounding and Stewardship Governance
The Ethereum Foundation uses the “ladder” metaphor to reveal the management philosophy of continuous ecosystem evolution.
● Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang explained in her speech: “Ethereum is a ladder,” a ladder that is continuously raised by the global community, with no predetermined endpoint, providing a path that everyone can climb at their own pace. She pointed out that today’s Ethereum is no longer just a blockchain, but a public infrastructure nurturing new types of assets, identities, cultures, and forms of collaboration.
● The Foundation’s responsibility is to “steady the ladder,” not to climb to the top itself. Wang summarized the Foundation’s new phase as three core capabilities: reliability, flexibility, and true governance responsibility.
● Ethereum has maintained zero downtime during all major upgrades, a trust built through long-term adherence to engineering standards, accumulated block by block.
3. Technological Breakthroughs: ZK Proofs and Real-Time Verification
ZK-EVM technology enters the Alpha phase, achieving real-time proofs with consumer-grade GPUs.
● Vitalik announced at the conference that provers can now use dozens of consumer-grade GPUs to generate real-time proofs for Ethereum blocks. This marks a major breakthrough in Ethereum’s scalability and verification efficiency.
● Brevis’s Pico Prism zkEVM has made significant progress in recent tests. In September, Pico Prism achieved 99.6% real-time proof within 12 seconds, using only 64 Nvidia RTX 5090 consumer-grade graphics cards. This breakthrough means that the computationally expensive proofs have finally caught up with block production speed, making lightweight verification possible for the first time using affordable consumer hardware.
● Real-time proofs break the existing verification model. Currently, each validator re-executes every transaction to verify the block, requiring expensive hardware and creating a fundamental bottleneck. In the new model, one prover generates a proof, and other validators verify it within milliseconds.
4. Fusaka Upgrade: Uninterrupted Operation and Reliability Commitment
The upcoming Ethereum mainnet Fusaka upgrade next month marks a new phase for Ethereum.
● Regarding this upgrade, Hsiao-Wei Wang explained that entering “Fusaka” requires focusing on three core capabilities: maintaining 100% continuous block production during all major upgrades; flexibility to allow for diverse technical paths in the ecosystem; and stewardship governance where the Foundation cares for but does not control Ethereum.
● Wang emphasized that Ethereum’s decade of accumulation comes from countless trials and persistence, with the network maintaining 100% uptime during all major updates. This reliability allows users to confidently invest in building.
● Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake added that the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade is expected to be released in December and will simplify real-time proofs. “EIP-7825 limits the gas usage per transaction, enabling more parallel proofs through sub-blocks.”
5. Institutional Adoption: The Fusion of Traditional Finance and Decentralization
● Former Foundation core researcher Danny Ryan highlighted Ethereum’s key role in decentralization and institutions from the perspective of institutional applications. Ryan shared his experience transitioning from protocol development to institutional applications. He criticized the inefficiency of traditional finance, such as severe market fragmentation, T+1 settlement for stocks, and T+2 for bonds, which is far inferior to Ethereum’s instant settlement.
● Traditional institutional system architectures are outdated, layered with laws and paperwork. But Ryan also noticed a strong demand for decentralization from institutions. From the institutional perspective, decentralization at the infrastructure layer, 100% uptime, security capable of supporting trillion-dollar asset classes, and mature application layers with privacy are all essential requirements.
● Ryan emphasized that after bridging the cognitive gap, institutions will realize the necessity of Ethereum. At the architectural level, he pointed out that Ethereum’s modular design and L2 ecosystem are highly attractive to institutions, as they can build L2s for specific assets with partners while sharing Ethereum’s security and liquidity.
6. “Trustless Manifesto”: Returning to Fundamental Principles
● The recently published “The Trustless Manifesto” by Vitalik and co-authors serves as the philosophical cornerstone of Ethereum’s coming-of-age. This document is a call to action for developers, urging them to recommit to the network’s founding principles: building systems that rely on mathematics and consensus, not on people or platforms.
● The manifesto proposes three “laws” of trustless design: no critical secrets, no indispensable intermediaries, no unverifiable outcomes.
● It ends with a powerful statement: “When only the privileged can participate, we refuse to call the system ‘permissionless.’”
● The manifesto compares Ethereum’s current trajectory to the evolution of email. Email was originally an open, decentralized protocol that anyone could run their own mail server for. Today, spam filters, blocklists, and trust-based reputation systems have made it nearly impossible for ordinary users to host their own mail servers.
7. Future Outlook: From World Computer to World Ledger
● In his recent reflections, Vitalik more specifically proposed Ethereum’s positioning as a “world ledger”. This concept better conveys Ethereum’s core value. He used an analogy: “If we consider the ledger (Ethereum) as a book, then ETH is like the ‘ink’ used to write the ledger. The ink can represent the functionality of L2s.”
● Ethereum’s role can be divided into two parts: First, it provides a tool to protect people’s freedom, autonomy, and organizational capacity, independent of any individual, company, or nation; the second part is the building of a global community.
● Ethereum has attracted a group of people who care about decentralized finance, innovative organizational forms, privacy protection, and democratic governance. The Ethereum community itself still holds irreplaceable value. On the key issue of privacy, Vitalik emphasized: “Privacy is a focus we must pay attention to. Privacy is freedom, and it is an important right that all of us should protect. Everyone in the Ethereum ecosystem should support the concept of privacy.”
He further pointed out: “We should not have ‘privacy wallets’; privacy should be a feature of all wallets, and privacy features should be seamlessly integrated into existing wallets.”
Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless pointed out that at a threefold annual scaling rate, Ethereum mainnet will reach 10,000 TPS by April 2029. Zero-knowledge verification could push the base layer to 10,000 transactions per second, which is the ultimate goal of blockchain: achieving massive scalability while maintaining decentralization and security.
The Ethereum ladder is already laid out, and as Hsiao-Wei Wang said, every new step built by a builder becomes the starting point for those who follow.
