Ethereum is undergoing an accelerated evolution. Vitalik recently reiterated that Ethereum is about to bring some surprises. From technology to finance, its roadmap is rapidly taking shape.

The influx of institutional funds, protocol upgrades, and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization is driving ecosystem expansion. Industry analysis suggests that by 2026, the stablecoin market could reach $500 billion, and tokenized RWAs could surpass $300 billion, indicating that on-chain financial infrastructure is beginning to take shape. More importantly, holdings related to sovereign funds could grow by 5 to 10 times. Meanwhile, on-chain AI agents and prediction markets are moving toward mainstream applications, and whale staking and rebalancing activities also confirm this trend.

Why is 2026 considered a watershed? The key lies in the scalability inflection point triggered by ZK proofs. Ordinary devices can now verify lightweight proofs, and by the end of the year, approximately 10% of validators are expected to switch to ZK mode. Coupled with upcoming hard fork upgrades, parallel processing capabilities and Gas limits will be significantly improved, gradually moving Ethereum toward the goal of 10,000 TPS.

How strong is Ethereum's current ecosystem performance? Post-merge, energy consumption has dropped by 99.95%, and transaction speeds on Layer 2 have increased by hundreds of times. The number of developers has grown by 40% annually, and the total value locked within the ecosystem remains stable at the trillion-dollar level. Ethereum is evolving into the settlement layer for open finance and the core engine for DApps.

Looking ahead, as ZK technology matures, interoperability between L2s will become more seamless, and privacy protection will also become a focus. Future hard fork upgrades will further enhance resistance to censorship. In the long term, Ethereum's progress will be reflected in the speed of code development, the scale of institutional holdings, and the wave of ZK validators. It is evolving from a settlement layer into a truly open computing layer.