jakiro
Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher
On Monday, the Ethereum Devconnect Developer Conference was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the speech, Vitalik Buterin raised the technical practice framework to discuss the value of Ethereum in the entire encryption industry. Tomasz Stanczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive directors of the Ethereum Foundation, focused on the role of Ethereum in the transition period, emphasizing reliable operation, community collaboration and continuous innovation. Former core researcher and current Etherealize co-founder Danny RyanFrom the perspective of institutional applications, the key role of Ethereum in decentralization and institutions is highlighted.
Moving towards the Fusaka stage, the Foundation: will achieve non-disruptive operational upgrades
In his speech, Tomasz Stanczak reviewed the development trajectory of Ethereum over the past ten years. He pointed out that during this period, he successfully established a solid foundation for consensus mechanisms, diverse clients, and privacy-related tools.However, he also warned that future challenges will include strengthening user privacy, maintaining decentralization, and improving personalized autonomous control, which requires the widespread recruitment of more contributors.At the meeting, Stanczak particularly described the participants in the Ethereum ecosystem from different fields. He believed that these decentralized contributions are the key to ensuring the security and operation of the network.
“Ethereum’s ability to operate without interruption in previous upgrades is due to the efforts of these long-term investors.”
Hsiao-Wei Wang explained the management philosophy of the foundation with “Ethereum is a ladder” and used “step compound interest” as a metaphor for ecological evolution, that is, from the beginning of research to the client to the application and finally to the community, each step becomes a new step for the next generation of builders.
She said, “This year is a new chapter for Ethereum. Since the Ethereum Foundation completed the new leadership change, the first responsibility Tomasz and I have set for ourselves is to ensure the stability and smoothness of this transition, because Ethereum is entering a new stage.”
Regarding the Fusaka upgrade of the Ethereum mainnet next month, she explained at the meeting that Ethereum needs to focus on three core capabilities to enter “Fusaka”. The first is to maintain 100% reliability of continuous block production in previous major upgrades; the second is the flexibility to leave enough space for the diversified technical paths of the ecosystem, and the foundation’s stewardship of Ethereum, which cares about Ethereum but does not control it.
Wang emphasized that Ethereum’s ten years of accumulation stem from countless trials and errors and persistence. The network maintains 100% availability in all major updates. It is this reliability that allows users to invest in construction without fear.
In addition, Danny Ryan, as a former core researcher of the foundation, shared his own experience of switching from protocol development to institutional application.Ryan criticizes the inefficiencies of traditional finance. For example, market fragmentation is serious. Stock settlement takes T+1 days and bonds take T+2 days, which is far inferior to Ethereum’s instant settlement. The traditional institutional system architecture is simply outdated and is like layers of laws and paper.
But Ryan was also surprised by the strong demand for decentralization by institutions. From an institutional perspective, decentralization of the infrastructure layer, 100% online rate, security of carrying trillions of asset classes, and mature application layer and privacy are all rigid needs. Ryan also emphasized that after filling the cognitive gap, institutions will realize the necessity of Ethereum.
Ethereum is repositioning, Vitalik discusses the value of existing in the crypto industry
Vitalik always uses “Ethereum in 30 Minutes” as the framework for his speeches at developer conferences, outlining the current situation and future of Ethereum in just 30 minutes.Comparing the content of Devcon SEA in 2024 to Devconnect ARG in 2025, Ethereum is repositioning, from its technical map to its value on the blockchain.
Last year Vitalik focused on the technical details of the “world computer”, namely how L1 functions as a trust anchor and the complementary capabilities of L2 like a GPU.“Ethereum’s world computer is held together because every GPU is connected to the most trusted machine through various technologies such as optimistic proof systems, zero-knowledge proofs, SNARKs, STARKs, Jolt, Plonk, and more.”
These systems essentially ensure that L1 can trustlessly verify what is happening inside L2, and L2 can trustlessly read what is happening on L1.There are important interactions between these two components, Vitalik said, “together they make up what Ethereum is today.”
Last year, he emphasized decentralized technical practices, such as the failure-proof design of multi-client architecture and the diversity of pledge pools, and reviewed the initial results from the 2013 white paper to the Merge transformation to the Surge stage, especially the significant reduction in fees and improvement in transaction confirmation time (from minutes to milliseconds), highlighting Ethereum’s various breakthroughs in scalability.
In contrast, the 2025 speech was more of a principled reflection. It started with FTX as a negative teaching material. Vitalik criticized FTX as a centralized exchange for being insolvent, emphasizing its essential difference from Ethereum, that is, how to move from centralized trust to a mechanism that can be verified by anyone.He extensively integrated cryptographic tools, such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and introduced the concept of “cosmolocal” (local global), emphasizing that Ethereum is a global network, not to please a specific company or a superpower, but to protect the freedom of people around the world.
And this year’s overall technology is more future-oriented, focusing on ZK-EVM’s full-node return and anti-quantum upgrade. Last year, Vitalik mentioned “wanting to perform SNARK certification on the entire chain.” This year, it was clearly announced that ZK-EVM has entered the Alpha stage. Vitalik said at the meeting, “Data from ethproofs.org shows that there are already provers who can use dozens of consumer-grade GPUs to prove Ethereum blocks in real time.”
It can be found that Vitalik focused on discussing technology in previous years, but this year he turned to discussing the “existence value” of Ethereum, reflecting that Ethereum is shifting from the infrastructure construction stage to positioning its influence on the chain.
Perhaps Ethereum is completing its own rite of passage, as Vitalik said at Devconnect ARG: “Ethereum can be a flag for a more free, open and collaborative world underpinned by permissionless open technology and decentralized security.”
