Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post titled “Cryptographic World Computer” (The cryptographic world computer). In the message, he assessed the progress of blockchain technology from the first ideas of Satoshi Nakamoto to the next “evolutionary stage” in Ethereum, which he defined for 2030. His main conclusion is that the current Ethereum network has moved so far away from its original architecture that calling it a blockchain is possible only for historical reasons.
“We talk about Ethereum as if it were the same technology as the Bitcoin blockchain, created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. In many ways, this is true—even for Ethereum of the future, which retains the core features of a blockchain. But at the same time, the technology has evolved significantly over the past fifteen years and is ready to evolve even more over the next three years—so much so that it is fair to call future Ethereum a qualitatively different type of system,” Buterin writes.
Changes in Ethereum
This is another of Buterin’s publications about the development of ether over the past two years. For some time before 2025, he kept his distance from public participation in the project’s development, mainly posting reflections on decentralization from a philosophical perspective.
At the same time, a conflict became noticeable among developers and community members over criticism of the organization behind the launch of the blockchain, the Ethereum Foundation—accused of inaction and lacking a common clear plan. Since then, Buterin has taken sole responsibility for the organization’s next steps, and has also resumed publishing specific plans for development.
Starting in 2026, Buterin’s public activity, as well as that of the entire developer community and other key participants in the Ethereum ecosystem, noticeably increased. From January, work began on a new blockchain development roadmap—a thing that had effectively not existed since 2022, when the network was making the transition from a mining algorithm to staking.
New potential developments and development plans now include topics such as artificial intelligence and even protection against quantum computer attacks. And in August, Buterin said that Ethereum is expecting one of the largest updates in the history of the network, comparable to the two-year transition to staking from 2020 to 2022. In addition, development priorities for the next few years include improving the efficiency and privacy of the Ethereum blockchain.
Since the beginning of the year, a number of key players have said that the current model, which includes burning and staking ETH coins, may be ineffective for increasing the token’s price. In other words, in the community they are no longer only discussing development but also criticizing the blockchain’s fundamental mechanisms themselves.
ETH price trend
These events coincided with stagnation of the ETH price relative to Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies. Despite the bull market of 2024–2025, the price of ether was unable to deliver growth results as strong as, for example, Bitcoin or Solana (SOL).
This became a separate source of dissatisfaction in the community, but despite that, ether managed to retain the status of the cryptocurrency with the second-largest market capitalization during those years.
Alongside the activity of Buterin and developers in 2025, demand for ETH rose. In the same year, its price reached a new all-time high of about $4.95 thousand. By the summer of 2026, ETH had fallen by 70% to a little over $1.5 thousand.
After that, the price started rising again. By the end of September, ether had gained almost 75% compared with the June low. For comparison, over the same period Bitcoin added about 45%.
Privacy in Ethereum
Buterin devoted special attention in the article to privacy at all levels of the blockchain. By 2030, he expects that not only the transactions themselves will be hidden, but also account data—made possible through zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-SNARKs).
He also raised questions of privacy on the part of network node operators processing transactions. He clarifies that everything is built on trust now—that nodes and services do not collect users’ data.
For example, if an ETH holder went to check their balance, then this data could theoretically be collected as well, linking the owner to other sensitive metadata.
Following these risks, in Buterin’s view, future Ethereum should provide privacy at the level of blockchain architecture, not as an optional feature.