Ethereum is brewing a paradigm shift in its ecosystem. By 2026, the dual spiral of technological innovation and capital influx may redefine the competitive landscape of public blockchains.

Early signs of capital movement are already evident. Large institutional staking volumes continue to rise—Bitmine has locked in 74,880 ETH in a single transaction, and sovereign funds are beginning to deploy, reflecting a growing long-term commitment to Ethereum's value. Deeper changes are occurring in liquidity structures: the market size of stablecoins and tokenized RWA (real-world assets) is expected to surpass $800 billion, and this massive on-chain asset stock will become the core driver of TVL growth.

Innovations at the technical level are also underway. ZK zero-knowledge proofs are moving from labs to production, with an expected 10% of validators switching to ZK verification mode by the end of 2026. Coupled with the Glamsterdam fork's optimization of parallel processing capabilities, the Gas limit could be raised to 200 million, enabling an average throughput of 10,000 TPS—compared to the current 15-20 TPS, this represents a magnitude of performance improvement.

Ecological resilience has already been demonstrated in previous iterations: post-merge, energy consumption has decreased by 99.95%, Layer 2 ecosystem applications have become a hundred times faster, and developer growth rates remain steady at 40% annually. After the Hegota fork, seamless interoperability between L1 and L2 is expected to become a standard paradigm, with privacy and censorship resistance attributes also being strengthened.

The critical point for ZK scaling has arrived, and the prototype of a trillion-dollar digital insurance vault is emerging. In 2026, can Ethereum leverage both technological breakthroughs and capital-driven forces to gain a new edge in public chain competition? This may be the most intriguing variable to watch in the upcoming period.