Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined a new five-year direction for the network at the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival on Monday.
In his speech, titled “The Future Direction of the Ethereum Protocol”, Buterin said Ethereum is not trying to become the fastest chain. Instead, he said the network should become the most secure, decentralized, and dependable platform for high-value digital activity.
In his keynote, Buterin said Ethereum serves two main purposes. First, it works like a public notice board where applications can post messages in a clear order that anyone can verify.
Second, it gives developers a way to run shared digital assets and systems through code, including tokens, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized organizations.
Buterin highlights that the features are meant to give users more control, make activity easier to verify, and support fair participation without depending on middlemen.
Short-term roadmap focuses on scaling, privacy, and quantum
The Ethereum co-founder said the network’s short-term plan has five simple goals.
First, it wants to handle more users and transactions faster. Second, it will start using ZK-EVM, a technology that helps process data more efficiently while keeping it secure.
Thirdly, it will start planning future threats posed by quantum computers. Fourth, it is intended to enhance the mechanism of the creation and addition of blocks to the blockchain. Lastly, it desires to provide the users with increased privacy.
When talking about scaling, he explained that the next upgrade (hard fork) will include changes to make Ethereum smoother and more efficient. It will also adjust gas fees so transactions are priced more fairly.
Another update, called ePBS, will improve how blocks are verified, even if it takes a bit more time. In addition, better synchronization will help nodes stay updated more quickly and accurately.
He also pointed to EIP-8141, an account abstraction proposal, as an important upgrade. According to Buterin, this design treats transactions as a series of calls.
That would allow Ethereum to support smart contract wallets more naturally, enable gas payments on behalf of other users, and improve compatibility with privacy tools and quantum-resistant signatures.
Buterin also discussed future risks posed by quantum computers. He said special security methods, called quantum-resistant signatures, have existed for many years. However, the main problem is that they are not efficient yet.
He explained that these signatures are much larger. For example, they can be 2-3 kilobytes, whereas current signatures are only about 64 bytes.
Due to this they are also more expensive to utilize on the network. Today, a normal signature costs around 3,000 gas, but quantum-resistant ones could cost around 200,000 gas.
To solve this, he said, developers are exploring better options. These include hash-based signatures and lattice-based methods.
Simply put, these are different ways to secure data. He added that combining these with smarter processing techniques, like vectorization, could help make them faster and cheaper in the future.
Ethereum’s co-founder stated, “Our ultimate goal is to make the protocol fully quantum-safe, ensuring that all parts are both secure and efficient, while improving the ‘modular’ construction process and strengthening privacy support.”
Medium-term work targets Ethereum’s state layer
Beyond near-term upgrades, Buterin said Ethereum also needs to fix a deeper issue in its state layer. He said scaling transaction processing is easier, but managing growing blockchain data over time is much harder.
He added that Ethereum will need better state tree designs and new methods that reduce the need to store all data forever. This is important to keep the network efficient and easier to run as usage grows.
Long-term plan aims for security, simplicity, and independence
Ethereum co-founder said the network’s long-term plan has five goals. These include stronger consensus, full quantum resistance, more simplicity, better long-term planning, and stronger verification across the protocol.
On consensus, he said Ethereum wants a system that stays secure even if many nodes fail or go offline. He also mentioned Lean Consensus, a model designed to combine Bitcoin-like chain design with faster finality.
This might assist Ethereum to reach greater security, quantum resistance and more rapid confirmation durations of approximately 10 and 20 seconds, based on the roadmap.
Buterin said formal verification is becoming more possible. He noted that artificial intelligence is already starting to create mathematical proofs, which could help improve Ethereum’s security over time.
Zero-knowledge technology remains a key part of Ethereum’s future. Buterin said zkVM is already fast enough to prove execution in real time.
He said the next move is to make it more secure and slowly roll it out across the network. In approximately 2028, zk-based verification might be one of the primary methods to check the chain. This could also make it easier for smaller devices to verify blockchain data.
Buterin ended by calling Ethereum a “world computer,” a shared global system where people can publish data, enforce rules, and run different types of applications.
He also warned in February that many new layer-2 projects are becoming too similar and urged teams to focus on more useful innovation.