Vitalik Buterin reviews Ethereum’s 2025 progress, highlighting technical gains while urging a stronger focus on decentralization, usability, and scalable infrastructure.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reflected on Ethereum’s progress during 2025 while addressing priorities for 2026. He recognized strong technical accomplishments at the same time, warning against distraction from Ethereum’s original mission.
Ethereum’s 2025 Progress Shows Strong Technical Momentum
During 2025, Ethereum implemented a number of measurable technical upgrades across the different layers of its core infrastructure. Gas limits were increased, meaning that more transactions can be included in a block and better throughput can be achieved. At the same time, the number of blobs increased to support cheaper and more efficient rollup data availability.
Welcome to 2026! Milady is back.
Ethereum did a lot in 2025: gas limits increased, blob count increased, node software quality improved, zkEVMs blasted through their performance milestones, and with zkEVMs and PeerDAS ethereum made its largest step toward being a fundamentally…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 1, 2026
Meanwhile, the quality of node software improved noticeably by several client implementations. These improvements led to a reduction in the synchronization failures and hardware requirements on node operators all over the world. According to community benchmarks, improved sync times improved network participation and resilience during times of high demand.
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In addition, zkEVM technology was able to achieve major performance milestones throughout the year. Several implementations showed considerable proofs generation speed improvements when compared against 2024 benchmarks. These improvements bolstered Ethereum’s scaling roadmap while maintaining the core decentralization guarantees.
Buterin said that zkEVMs and PeerDAS combined represented Ethereum’s greatest structural shift in years. These technologies brought Ethereum a step closer to being fundamentally new and more powerful blockchain system. However, he warned that progress should not stop with headline technical achievements.
Rather than going on the hunt of short-term narratives, Buterin wanted Ethereum to avoid trend-driven development cycles. He pointed out specifically tokenized assets and political memecoins as a distraction to Ethereum’s long-term goals.
Buterin referred to Ethereum as a platform for decentralized applications on a fraud-free and third-party interference-free manner. He stressed applications must remain functional in the event original developers become absent. This “walkaway test,” he argued, describes in practice what decentralization is.
Usability and Decentralization Must Advance Together
Looking to the future, Buterin said that Ethereum needs to be usable on a global scale. Importantly, usability improvements should not sacrifice the foundations of decentralization. Both goals need to move forward simultaneously with both layers of blockchain software and application design.
At the blockchain layer, these improvements include node software, network efficiency, and client diversity. These upgrades alleviate the pressures of centralization and also enhance the network’s robustness. According to reports by Ethereum Foundation, due to the improved performance of clients, the average node costs were reduced in 2025.
At the application layer, Buterin drew attention to user experience and privacy protections as key priorities. Decentralized applications should be obscured from users. They should also be functional in case of major outages to centralized infrastructure providers.
He likened this vision to previous consumer tools that were standalone and had no subscriptions or central oversight. Today, many of the digital services are based on permanent dependence models. Ethereum, he argued, symbolizes resistance of that structural trend of centralization.
Buterin focused on Ethereum’s relevance and not just finance. He cited identity, governance and more general civilizational infrastructure as important use cases. These systems need to be reliable, neutral, and censorship-resistant for decades, rather than market cycles.
Despite the progress made, Buterin recognized that there is still much work to be done. Scalability needs to continue to improve without further reducing decentralization. There has to be better usability for non-technical people coming into the ecosystem worldwide.
Ultimately, Buterin found that Ethereum’s future relies on commitment to Ethereum’s mission. By focusing on the durability of infrastructure as opposed to short term incentives, Ethereum has the opportunity to grow into a true global world computer.