The Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, Hsiao-Wei Wang, metaphorically described the ecological evolution of the past decade as "Ethereum is a ladder," and now, this ladder is leading the blockchain world towards a more free, 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 explore the "value of existence" of Ethereum from a more macro perspective.

Ethereum is completing its coming-of-age ceremony. From the launch of the mainnet in 2015 to now, Ethereum has transitioned from a foundational infrastructure phase to positioning its influence on-chain. As Vitalik stated in his conference speech: "Ethereum can become a banner, leading a world supported by permissionless open technology and decentralized security, towards a more free, open, and collaborative future."

1. Shift in Perspective: From Technology-Driven to Value Exploration

Vitalik's speech framework is shifting from a purely technical blueprint to deeper principled reflections.

● The contrast between the speeches in 2024 and 2025 is particularly evident. Last year, he focused mainly on the technical details of the "world computer," explaining in detail how L1 serves as a trust anchor and how L2 functions complementarily like GPUs.

● He emphasized at that time: "The reason the Ethereum world computer can unite is that every GPU connects to the most trusted machines through various technologies such as optimistic proof systems, zero-knowledge proofs, SNARKs, STARKs, Jolt, Plonk, etc."

● This year, Vitalik opened with FTX as a cautionary tale, criticizing its lack of solvency as a centralized exchange, emphasizing the essential difference between Ethereum and centralized trust mechanisms.

He widely incorporated cryptographic tools such as zero-knowledge proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, introducing the concept of "cosmolocal" (locally global), clarifying that Ethereum is a global network, not designed to please any specific company or superpower.

2. Governance Philosophy: Ladder Compounding and Guardian Governance

The Ethereum Foundation uses the metaphor of a "ladder" to reveal the management philosophy of continuous ecological evolution.

● The Foundation's Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang explained in her speech: "Ethereum is a ladder," which is a ladder continuously raised by the global community, with no preset 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," rather than climb to the top itself. Wang summarized the Foundation's new phase into three core capabilities: reliability, flexibility, and true governance responsibility.

● Ethereum has maintained zero downtime during major upgrades, and this trust comes from long-standing engineering standards that need to be accumulated block by block.

3. Technological Breakthrough: ZK Proofs and Real-Time Verification Breakthroughs

ZK-EVM technology has entered the Alpha stage, achieving real-time proofs with consumer-grade GPUs.

● Vitalik announced at the conference that there are now provers capable of real-time proving Ethereum blocks using dozens of consumer-grade GPUs. This progress marks a significant breakthrough for Ethereum in scalability and verification efficiency.

● Brevis's Pico Prism zkEVM has made significant progress in recent tests. In September's tests, Pico Prism achieved 99.6% real-time proof in 12 seconds using only 64 consumer-grade Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics cards. This breakthrough means that the costly proofs have finally caught up with block production speed, making lightweight verification possible for the first time using affordable consumer-grade hardware.

● Real-time proofs break the existing verification model. Currently, each verifier re-executes every transaction to verify blocks, which requires expensive hardware and creates a fundamental bottleneck. Under the new model, one prover generates a proof, and other verifiers validate 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 Ethereum's transition to "Fusaka" needs to focus on three core capabilities: maintaining 100% continuous block production reliability during major upgrades; providing flexibility to accommodate diverse technological paths for the ecosystem; and guardian governance where the Foundation cares for but does not control Ethereum.

● Wang emphasized, the ten-year accumulation of Ethereum comes from countless trials and persistence. The network has maintained 100% availability during all major updates, and this reliability allows users to invest in construction without fear.

● Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake added that the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade is expected to be released in December, which will simplify real-time proofs. "EIP-7825 limits the gas usage for each transaction, allowing for more parallel proofs through sub-blocks."

5. Institutional Adoption: The Fusion of Traditional Finance and Decentralization

● Former core researcher of the Foundation, Danny Ryan, pointed out Ethereum's key role in decentralization and institutions from an institutional application perspective. Ryan shared his experience of transitioning from protocol development to institutional applications. He criticized traditional finance for its inefficiency, such as severe market fragmentation, with stock settlements requiring T+1 days and bonds T+2 days, far inferior to Ethereum's instant settlement.

● Traditional institutional system architectures are outdated, like layers of overlapping laws and paperwork. However, Ryan also noted the strong demand from institutions for decentralization. From an institutional perspective, the decentralization of the infrastructure layer, 100% online rate, security for trillion-level asset classes, and mature application layers with privacy are all necessities.

● 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 very attractive to institutions, as they can build L2s targeting specific assets with partners while sharing Ethereum's security and liquidity.

6. "Trustless Manifesto": Returning to Fundamental Principles

● Vitalik and co-authors recently released "The Trustless Manifesto," which serves as the philosophical cornerstone of Ethereum's coming-of-age ceremony. This document is a call to action for developers, urging them to recommit to the founding principles of the network: to build systems based on mathematics and consensus, rather than relying on people or platforms.

● The manifesto proposes three "laws" of trustless design: no key secrets, no indispensable intermediaries, and no unverifiable outcomes.

● It concludes 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 initially an open, decentralized protocol that anyone could run their own mail server. Today, spam filters, block lists, and trust-based reputation systems have effectively made it nearly impossible for ordinary users to host their own mail servers.

7. Future Outlook: From World Computer to World Ledger

● Vitalik has recently articulated a more specific positioning of Ethereum as a "world ledger." This concept better conveys Ethereum's core value. He metaphorically stated: "If we compare the ledger (Ethereum) to a book, then ETH is like the 'ink' used to write the ledger. The ink can represent the functions of L2."

● Ethereum's role can be divided into two parts: First, it provides a tool that protects people's freedom, autonomy, and organizational capabilities, which does not rely on any individual, company, or country; the second part is the construction of a global community.

● Ethereum attracts a group of people concerned with decentralized finance, innovative organizational forms, privacy protection, and democratic governance, and the Ethereum community itself still holds irreplaceable value. Regarding the critical issue of privacy, Vitalik emphasized: "Privacy is a focus we must pay attention to; privacy is freedom, an important right that we should all 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 able to seamlessly integrate into existing wallets."

Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless pointed out that with a threefold annual expansion rate, the Ethereum mainnet will reach 10,000 TPS by April 2029. Zero-knowledge proofs may push the base layer to 10,000 transactions per second, which is the ultimate goal of blockchain: achieving large-scale expansion while ensuring decentralization and security.

The ladder of Ethereum has been laid out, as Hsiao-Wei Wang said, every new step laid by builders will become a starting point for future generations.

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