Vitalik Announces Ethereum's Five-Year Roadmap: Scaling, Quantum Resistance, and ZK-EVM Progressing in Parallel

Short-term Goals
Data and Computation Scaling: Increase Gas Limit, introduce parallelization and Gas re-pricing, enhance data availability through Danksharding
Quantum Security and Account Abstraction: Introduce hash/quantum-resistant signatures, significantly reduce Gas consumption from 200k; EIP-8141 natively supports smart contract wallets, paymaster Gas, and privacy protocols
The next hard fork will include multiple EIPs, focusing on scaling, ZK-EVM promotion, and early post-quantum preparedness
Mid- to Long-term Goals
State Management: State scaling is a deeper challenge, requiring state tree optimization and solutions that do not store the entire state permanently
Consensus Security: Synchronous networks tolerate 49% node failures, asynchronous networks maintain 33% security, Lean Consensus combines availability and BFT advantages
ZK-EVM Three-Phase Roadmap: Ensure security by 2026, deploy starting with a small percentage of nodes; by 2028, become the main chain verification method, achieving 10–20 second block finality, enabling lightweight nodes like mobile and IoT to independently verify on-chain data
Underlying Philosophy
Decentralization and Resilience: Ensure protocol independence through “walk testing,” so even if the core team disappears, the protocol can still operate securely
World Computer Positioning: A globally shared data publishing and rule execution layer, safeguarding user sovereignty, security, and verifiability
AI-Assisted Formal Verification: Use AI to generate mathematical proofs for long-term security validation of protocols
Ethereum’s core value is not about being the fastest, but about becoming the most secure, most decentralized, and always-online trusted chain.