How Does Vitalik Buterin Want to Change Ethereum by 2030?

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has presented his long-term vision for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. By 2030, the network is intended to transform into a so-called cryptographic world computer. The foundation of the entire change is to move away from the existing model, in which every computer repeats the same calculations, and replace it with fast mathematical proofs and stronger privacy protection.

The End of Unnecessary Repetition of the Same Work

Today’s Ethereum bases its security on computers in the network performing practically the same tasks and verifying each transaction independently. Although this approach provides a high level of security, it significantly limits overall capacity. Adding more computers does not increase performance, because all participating machines continuously verify the same activity.

The new concept is based on separating the computation itself from the verification of its correctness. One computer performs a more complex operation outside the main blockchain and creates a short mathematical proof for it. The other machines in the network then verify only this proof, which takes a fraction of the time and computing power. This allows the network to process multiple tasks simultaneously and naturally increase its capacity.

Hegotá Upgrade in 2027 as a Key Milestone

An important step in this development will be the planned upgrade called Hegotá, scheduled for 2027. According to Buterin, it will probably be the last classic technological update that even developers from Ethereum’s early days would understand. All subsequent changes will already be built primarily on mathematical proofs, advanced code verification and protection against future quantum computers.

The goal for 2030 is for payments to achieve final confirmation in approximately 8 to 32 seconds. At the same time, this would allow ordinary users on mobile phones to independently verify the correctness of transactions using lightweight wallets, without the need to rely on large external servers.

Focus on Privacy and Technical Challenges in Practice

Alongside increasing performance, the new vision also places strong emphasis on privacy protection. Current wallets send requests to external servers when checking balances, which may reveal information about the account holder. The new features are intended to hide not only the details of the payments themselves, but also requests for wallet status. Projects such as Zcash and the latest research proposal Shielded Bitcoin serve as inspiration in this area.

However, developers still face two significant technical obstacles. The first is the need to substantially accelerate and reduce the cost of generating the mathematical proofs themselves, while the second is the correct coordination of account states during parallel processing. The success of the entire vision will therefore depend on how quickly these complex technological challenges can be solved.

Warning: The content of this article is intended solely for informational and analytical purposes and does not constitute investment advice, a financial recommendation or a proposal to buy or sell any digital assets or securities.