Future Technology Development Roadmap of Ethereum and Its Potential Impact

The technology development roadmap of Ethereum outlines significant breakthroughs that may be achieved in the next two years, which are expected to provide substantial support for the Ethereum ecosystem. Here are several key technical directions and their potential impacts:

zkEVM Layer 1 Integration

The mainnet deployment is expected to be completed between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. This technology aims to achieve 99% of blocks being validated within 10 seconds and reduce the cost of zero-knowledge proof verification by 80%.

The significance of this development is reflected in:

• The market share of major stablecoins on the Ethereum main chain may further expand, increasing daily Gas consumption and driving ETH deflation.
• Zero-knowledge proof technology provides compliance and privacy protection for traditional financial institutions, potentially activating large-scale institutional DeFi application scenarios.

RISC-V Execution New Architecture

The R&D plan will start in the second half of 2025, with phased implementation expected between 2026 and 2030. The main objectives include:

• Improve the execution efficiency of smart contracts by 3 to 5 times.
• Reduce Gas costs by 50-70%
• Adopt an open-source instruction set architecture to enhance compatibility with modern hardware acceleration technologies.

The potential impacts of these improvements:

• The significant improvement in performance may give rise to new application scenarios, such as high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, and microtransactions.
• Lower gas costs are expected to reactivate small transactions, expand the user base and usage frequency, forming a positive cycle of ETH demand.

Layer 1 - Layer 2 Ecological Collaboration

Scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025 and continuously optimize in 2026-2027. The main objectives include:

• Seamless interoperability between Layer 1 and major Layer 2 solutions
• Integrate the current decentralized liquidity of approximately 120 billion USD, with the unified liquidity pool scale expected to exceed 200 billion USD.
• Reduce cross-layer transaction costs by 90%, achieving cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds.

The significance of these developments is that:

• DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate the liquidity of the entire ecosystem, generate synergies, and significantly enhance capital efficiency and user experience.

Validator Economic Optimization

Starting from the second half of 2025, in conjunction with various technological upgrades and optimizations, it is expected to be perfected over a period of two years. The main objectives include:

• Gradually lower the minimum staking threshold for validators from 32 Ether to 16 Ether, and it may eventually be reduced to 1 Ether.
• Increase the annualized staking yield from the current 4-6% to 6-8%
• Simplified validator operation requirements, supporting lightweight node validation, enhancing the level of decentralization in the network.

The impacts that these changes may bring:

• The ETH staking rate is expected to increase from the current approximately 25% to over 40%, further reducing the circulating supply and strengthening deflationary expectations.
• The enhancement of staking yields will increase the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond," providing fundamental support for its valuation.

Sharding Technology Returns (ETH 3.0)

It is expected to begin design and development in 2026, possibly to be realized in 2027-2028 or further in the future. The main objectives include:

• Combining zkEVM and sharding technology to achieve millions of transactions per second.
• Reduce data availability costs by 99%
• By distributing blockchain data across multiple shards, validators only need to process a portion of the data.

The importance of this technology lies in:

• The reintroduction of sharding technology indicates that Ethereum is preparing for the large-scale adoption of Web3 in the next decade, moving towards the vision of a "world computer."

These technological advancements demonstrate the development direction of Ethereum in the coming years, promising significant improvements and new opportunities for its ecosystem.