Ethereum co-founder details gas reforms and zkEVM push to boost network capacity

Vitalik Buterin outlines roadmap to scale Ethereum 1,000x

Vitalik Buterin has outlined a structured plan to significantly expand Ethereum's capacity, detailing both short-term upgrades and longer-term architectural changes to make the network substantially faster and more scalable.

In an X post on Friday, the Ethereum co-founder described how the network could eventually achieve up to 1,000x more throughput on its base layer, commonly referred to as Layer 1.

Buterin's roadmap divides progress into near-term protocol improvements and longer-term structural transformations. The next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, is expected to introduce immediate efficiency gains.

Among the proposed changes are adjustments that allow different parts of a block to be verified in parallel rather than sequentially, reducing processing bottlenecks. Additional verification time will also be introduced to improve reliability without slowing overall performance.

Another notable solution involves refining Ethereum's gas model. Under the proposed "multidimensional gas" model, certain resource-intensive actions, such as creating new storage entries, would have independent limits. This separation is designed to prevent storage-heavy operations from crowding out routine transactions, while also slowing the long-term growth of the network's stored data.

Improvements to data availability also form part of the roadmap. Ethereum has already introduced "blob" transactions to store large data payloads more efficiently, primarily for Layer 2 scaling solutions.

Future iterations of Peer Data Availability Sampling technology are expected to expand this model, enabling higher throughput without requiring every node to download all underlying data. Over time, even core Layer 1 data structures may rely more heavily on blob-based architecture.

A central component of Buterin's proposal addresses Ethereum's state growth problem. As decentralized applications expand, the volume of stored account balances, contract code, and transaction histories increases steadily. This growth raises hardware requirements for validators and can threaten long-term decentralization.

The concept preserves Ethereum's existing, fully featured storage model for complex applications while introducing simpler, lower-cost storage.

Under this framework, common data such as ERC-20 token balances or NFT ownership records could migrate to more restricted storage tiers. These tiers would offer fewer capabilities but require significantly fewer resources to maintain.

Beyond incremental optimizations, Buterin's longer-term vision centers on integrating zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine technology (zkEVM). Zero-knowledge proofs allow a system to verify that computations were executed correctly without requiring each participant to rerun them. If implemented at scale, this approach could significantly reduce the computational burden on network validators.

The transition to zkEVM-based validation would occur gradually. In 2026, select nodes may begin experimenting with zkEVM verification in parallel with existing mechanisms. By 2027, a larger share of nodes could adopt the new system, enabling the protocol to raise gas limits more aggressively. Ultimately, blocks may require multiple independent proofs from different implementations, further reinforcing security through redundancy.