Ethereum's 11th Year: Why Is This Year Particularly Crucial?
Ethereum's 11th year proved pivotal, marked by a dual evolution in its technical roadmap and organizational structure.
The year saw the completion of the Fusaka upgrade, introducing PeerDAS to make data availability sampling more efficient and laying groundwork for future L2 scaling. This was followed by a significant reorganization of the Ethereum Foundation (EF). The EF downsized, redefining its core mandate around user sovereignty and CROPS principles, while spinning off key functions. Independent entities like Ethlabs (non-profit R&D), Ethereum Institutional (institutional onboarding), and EthSystems (institutional privacy solutions) now operate separately.
Technologically, the community debated a bold, long-term vision outlined in Justin Drake's "Lean Ethereum" proposal and the collaborative "Strawmap." These point toward a "third major iteration" for Ethereum, targeting goals like faster finality (~1 second), gigagas-scale L1 throughput, teragas-scale L2 capacity, post-quantum cryptography, and protocol-level privacy.
Data underscores Ethereum's dominant position: its L1 still holds roughly half of all stablecoin value, leads in tokenized Real-World Assets (RWA), and commands over 55% of total DeFi TVL. While L2s now handle over 10x more transactions than the mainnet, high-value assets remain concentrated on L1. The launch of Robinhood Chain, an EVM-compatible L2 for stock tokens, signals growing institutional adoption.
The immediate roadmap includes the Glamsterdam upgrade (featuring ePBS for in-protocol proposer-builder separation and Block Access Lists for parallelism), potentially followed by Hegotá focusing on anti-censorship via FOCIL.
In summary, Ethereum's 11th year was defined by setting ambitious technical foundations for its next decade and restructuring its core development ecosystem to be more modular and sustainable, all while maintaining its role as the leading settlement layer for decentralized finance and assets.
marsbit29m ago
