Vitalik: ZK-EVM and PeerDAS will solve the blockchain trilemma, enabling the Ethereum network to achieve decentralization, security, and scalability simultaneously

BlockBeats News, January 4th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media, stating, "With ZK-EVM entering the alpha phase (performance now at production level, remaining major work is on security), and with PeerDAS already live on the mainnet, we will delve into what this combination means for Ethereum. This is not a small upgrade; they are transforming Ethereum into a fundamentally new and more powerful decentralized network."

BitTorrent (2000) is highly bandwidth-intensive, highly decentralized, but lacks a consensus mechanism. Bitcoin (2009) is highly decentralized, has consensus, but has low bandwidth—because it does not achieve "distributed" through sharding, but through duplication of work. And now, with the addition of PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVM (expected to see some network usage by 2026), Ethereum now has: decentralization, consensus, and high bandwidth. The impossible trilemma has been solved, not just in papers but with running code. Half of it (data availability sampling) is already running on the mainnet today, the other half (ZK-EVM) has reached production-level performance, with the primary remaining concern being security.

Over the next approximately 4 years, this vision can be expected to unfold gradually: · 2026: Gas limit not depending on ZK-EVM will be substantially increased due to BALs and ePBS, and we will also see the first opportunities to run ZK-EVM nodes; · 2026–2028: Gas repricing, state structure adjustments, execution payloads moving into blobs, and other adjustments to enhance security for a higher gas limit; · 2027–2030: As ZK-EVM becomes the primary way of block verification on the network, a further substantial increase in the gas limit will come.

The third part of this vision is distributed block construction. A long-term ideal is: no single location should ever fully construct a complete block. Even before reaching this stage, we hope to significantly distribute substantial power in block construction. This can be achieved through on-chain methods (e.g., finding ways to expand FOCIL to become the primary channel for transactions entering blocks) as well as off-chain methods, such as a distributed builder marketplace. Doing so can reduce the risk of centralized forces intervening in real-time transaction packaging and create a more geographically equitable environment."