On October 17, the "10th Global Blockchain Summit" hosted by Wanxiang Blockchain Lab officially commenced. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in his speech, reviewed the development path of Ethereum and looked forward to the future, stating, "In the future, Ethereum can achieve over 100,000 TPS through L2, and transfers from any chain on Ethereum to other chains can be completed within 2 seconds, even forming a unified user experience. Additionally, the infrastructure of Ethereum is also expanding, and the security of links is more important than EVM."

The full text of the speech is as follows:

Vitalik: Good morning, everyone!

The Ethereum project started in November 2013, the Ethereum Foundation began in 2014, and the Ethereum token launched in July 2015.

In the ten years since the start of the Ethereum project, the main goal has been to develop Ethereum technology. If you listen to my speeches from 2015, 2016, and 2017, you might find that my views back then are quite similar to what I am saying now. In 2022, we merged from POW to POS, and I also talked about scalability, privacy, zero-knowledge proof technology, and some security issues. In fact, what we are doing now is quite similar to what we were doing five or ten years ago. However, there has been significant progress over these ten years.

How do we see this progress?

First, the transaction fees on Ethereum Layer 2. Sending a transaction requires paying a corresponding transaction fee. In 2020 and 2021, you might remember that there was no Layer 2; at that time, Layer 2 was just an idea, and the transaction fees on Layer 1 were particularly high, sometimes $5, sometimes $10, which was a lot. The highest transaction fee I paid was $800.

In 2022 and 2023, we started to have some Layer 2 solutions, which are much cheaper than Layer 1, but still not cheap enough.

At that time, there was a significant scalability issue. In 2022 and 2023, we began to have Layer 2, which was much cheaper than Layer 1, but still not cheap enough. In March of this year, we introduced a very important concept, EIP-4844, which allows for more data space on Layer 2, enabling some Layer 2 transactions to have very low fees, dropping from $0.20 to $0.01, which is a significant difference. For many applications, if you tell users that doing anything on-chain only costs $0.40, developers feel that this is completely unacceptable. If transaction fees can be reduced to $0.01, that would be a completely different situation.

In fact, there are now many AGI applications that can be developed. Because when applications have a large number of transactions, users are unwilling to pay $0.20, but for non-TURBO applications, users are accustomed to free transactions, and $0.01 can be considered very small. Developers can cover these costs for users, which is a success for Ethereum in social applications. By solving related issues, we have reduced the transaction fee problem.

Second, transaction confirmation speed.

This refers to how long it takes for a transaction to be confirmed on the blockchain after you send it. As we know, the average block time for Bitcoin is 10 minutes, sometimes 65 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes, and sometimes 70 minutes, making the confirmation time very unstable. Ethereum's initial block time was 17 seconds, then it became 4 seconds, and then 12 seconds. However, we have a problem with the efficiency of the gas fee model. When you send a transaction, if the transaction fee is very high, you will find that you have to wait a long time, possibly 5 minutes or 30 minutes, for your transaction to be included in a block. However, in 2021, we implemented the EIP-1559 protocol, and after that, users' waiting time became very short. In fact, most of the time, after you send a transaction, you will find that your transaction is confirmed in the corresponding block, which happens about 90% of the time. In the remaining 10% of cases, you still have to wait for the corresponding block, but the waiting time is very low. This is Layer 2.

In 2023 and 2024, our initial goal is to solve the scalability issue and create cheaper transactions by sending your transactions to Layer 2 nodes, which will directly confirm your transactions and include them in the next block. If you are willing to trust Layer 2 nodes, you can know that your transaction is confirmed within 1 second or 0.5 seconds. This is also a very important aspect.

Third, the user experience of various applications.

On the left, you can see the interface based on Ethereum from 2015, called EtherTweet. This is a very simple thing, and it is clearly an early version. If you are not a blockchain user, you would not know what Ethereum means. On the right, you can see Firefly (Farcaster + Twitter + Lens Client), which is a client they developed. Everyone knows that Farcaster is the largest social platform based on Ethereum.

In this Firefly interface, you will notice that the quality of the clients is very good. Why did I mention three? You might have seen some information indicating that in some countries, including Argentina and Turkey, over 10% of the national population holds digital currency. I found that there are indeed many digital currency users in these places, but there is a problem: they are not blockchain users. They use their digital currencies through some centralized services. Why? Because transactions through centralized services, from one account to another, are free, and there is no waiting time. Additionally, the interfaces are well designed.

If we want these users to not only be digital currency users but also blockchain users, truly experiencing the trustless nature of blockchain, we need to solve the blockchain issues.

There are also many advancements in the topic of smart accounts and account abstraction. We have made significant progress this year.

For example, Sa此e is a well-known multi-signature wallet that many people are using. ZKEmail allows you to have an email account that can use Ethereum smart contracts, implemented through zero-knowledge proofs.

There are also some issues related to account abstraction.

Then there is the topic of zero-knowledge proofs. I have been discussing zero-knowledge proofs since 2015. This technology has developed significantly; in 2016, a Zcash transaction took 90 seconds or 2 minutes on a computer, and it was completely impossible on a mobile phone. Now, sending a protocol can be done in 1 second on a mobile phone, so the progress is substantial. For example, Zupass is based on zero-knowledge proofs for identity; Rarimo uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify information in your passport.

The user experience of wallets has also improved significantly.

So over the past ten years, there have indeed been many technological advancements, bringing numerous benefits to users. Five years ago, we could only do some early-stage things. However, it was impossible for blockchain applications to become mainstream users, but now it is possible.

So what is our main issue now? For Ethereum, a very important question is that everyone feels that the Ethereum ecosystem is like a 30-year-old person; what we should do is unify the Ethereum ecosystem.

If you have tokens on other chains and want to send them to other chains, the process is very complicated. A user needs to go to a specific website, and the entire process is complex, making it easy to make mistakes. If you want to send a token and do not select the correct network, you will send it incorrectly. So now we have many challenges, mainly in this area.

Additionally, I have an important topic, which is chain-specific addresses.

There is also the ERC-7683 protocol, which is a protocol for trading tokens. You can use this protocol to trade your tokens and exchange them for tokens on another chain. If we combine these two, the process of issuing tokens will become very simple.

Another topic is lightweight clients. Most users currently access through an RPS and some nodes, depending on what they want to see. This RDC process is based on trust and is centralized. There is a project that uses Helios as a lightweight client without L2. If you have an L2, you can place a contract on the Ethereum chain, and L2 can pin its own Merkle proof verification function in the bridge contract, serving as a universal lightweight client. In fact, we have many solutions to address various issues.

Another very important topic is the development of zero-knowledge proofs. In the past five years, zero-knowledge proofs have evolved from a theoretical concept to something that many people can use. Therefore, zero-knowledge proofs now have many on-chain applications and some off-chain applications. The largest circle is very interesting; Crypto is not moving forward. So now in Crypto, I believe that for non-financial applications to succeed, they need to utilize a part of the blockchain while also having a significant off-chain component. This is because non-financial applications require much more gas than financial applications. You send how many transactions daily, how much you pay, etc. You engage in non-financial applications daily, such as posting something on social media. Therefore, I believe that blockchain cannot handle everything.

Now, let's talk about the future of Ethereum.

First, achieving over 100,000 TPS through L2. A Google article states that this goal can be reached through certain methods.

Second, enabling transfers from any chain on Ethereum to any other chain within 2 seconds.

Third, a unified user experience, which is very important.

Fourth, not just EVM: the security of links is more important than EVM. Ethereum's technology is expanding; Ethereum has both EVM and non-EVM components. For Ethereum, the security of links means whether your chain is protected by Ethereum, which is more important than EVM. This is the technical direction we still need to pursue.

There are many things we can start doing now. So if you have some ideas but failed before, I believe now is the time to try again. With the current technology, things that did not succeed before may (perhaps) succeed now.

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