ETHOkyiv 2025 served as a pivotal platform for major announcements regarding Ethereum’s future, with co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Tomasz K. Stańczak unveiling ambitious technical roadmaps. Their presentations highlighted a significant leap in network efficiency and accessibility, promising to transform user experience and bolster the protocol's foundational capabilities. These updates aim to make Ethereum not only faster and more affordable but also incredibly user-friendly, pushing it towards mainstream adoption.
Revolutionizing Node Accessibility
A groundbreaking revelation from Vitalik Buterin centered on the ability to run full Ethereum nodes directly on smartphones and smartwatches. This "Ethereum on your phone" vision is powered by ongoing advancements in zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs). By drastically lightening the resource requirements for nodes, zkEVMs enable verification of transactions without needing to store extensive data, significantly reducing storage needs. This innovation democratizes network participation, fostering greater decentralization by allowing everyday users to contribute directly to the network's integrity.
Accelerating Mainnet Performance
Complementing this, Tomasz K. Stańczak detailed dramatic performance upgrades for the Ethereum mainnet. By the end of 2025, Ethereum L1 is projected to achieve 400 transactions per second (TPS), a substantial increase in throughput. Further enhancing user experience, a move to 3-Slot Finality (3SF) by the end of 2026 will slash average transaction confirmation times from 15 minutes to a mere 36 seconds. These improvements are critical for the Layer 1, which underpins the entire ecosystem's security and censorship resistance. Faster mainnet finality ensures that transactions processed on both L1 and dependent Layer 2s are confirmed with near-instant speed, mimicking traditional digital payments while retaining the core benefits of decentralization.
