What price supports are there for Ethereum's roadmap in the next two years?

Author: Haotian

Based on the technical roadmap of Ethereum for the next two years, sharing several potential "technical breakthroughs" that may… provide support for prices (exclusive to E Guardian):

1) zkEVM Layer 1 Integration

Implementation Timeline: Mainnet deployment completed between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026;

Technical Goals:

• 99% of blocks verified within 10 seconds;
• Zero-knowledge proof verification costs reduced by 80%;

Significance of Implementation:

• The market share of stablecoins like USDC and USDT on the Ethereum main chain will further expand, with daily Gas consumption correspondingly increasing, directly driving ETH deflation;
• zkEVM zero-knowledge proof technology provides compliance and privacy protection for traditional financial institutions, potentially activating large-scale DeFi application scenarios for institutions;

2) RISC-V Execution New Architecture

Implementation Timeline: Research and development begin in the second half of 2025, with phased slow advancement from 2026 to 2030;

Technical Goals:

• Smart contract execution efficiency improved by 3-5 times;
• Gas costs reduced by 50-70%;
• Open-source instruction set architecture to replace the current EVM, better compatible with modern hardware acceleration technologies;

Significance of Implementation:

• The significant improvement in execution performance will give rise to entirely new application scenarios, such as: high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, micro-payments, and micro-transactions;
• Lower Gas costs will reactivate small transaction scenarios, significantly expanding the user base and usage frequency, forming a positive cycle of ETH demand;

3) Layer 1 - Layer 2 Ecosystem Synergy

Implementation Timeline: Start in Q4 2025, with continuous optimization from 2026 to 2027;

Technical Goals:

• Achieve seamless interoperability between L1 and major L2s (such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, etc.);
• Current decentralized liquidity is approximately $120 billion TVL, with unified liquidity pool TVL exceeding $200 billion;
• Cross-layer transaction costs reduced by 90%, achieving cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds;

Significance of Implementation:

• DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate liquidity across the entire ecosystem (L1 + L2), generating a network effect of 1 + 1 > 2, significantly enhancing the capital efficiency and application experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem;

4) Validator Economy Optimization

Implementation Timeline: Start in the second half of 2025, optimizing in sync with various technical upgrades, continuing for 2 years;

Technical Goals:

• Gradually reduce the minimum staking threshold for validators from 32 ETH to 16 ETH, and eventually down to 1 ETH;
• Increase staking annual yield from the current 4-6% to 6-8%;
• Simplify the operational threshold for validators, support light node validation, and enhance the decentralization of the network;

Significance of Implementation:

• The reduction of validator thresholds and optimization of yield models are expected to increase the ETH staking rate from the current approximately 25% to over 40% (approximately 48 million ETH locked), further reducing the circulating supply of ETH and strengthening deflationary expectations;
• Enhanced staking yields will increase the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond," providing fundamental support for its valuation;

5) Sharding Technology Return (ETH 3.0)

Implementation Timeline: Design and development begin in 2026, with realization in 2027-2028 or later;

Technical Goals:

• Achieve millions of transactions per second through the combination of zkEVM and sharding;
• Data availability costs reduced by 99%;
• Distribute blockchain data across multiple shards, with validators only needing to process a portion of the data;

Significance of Implementation:

• The reintroduction of sharding indicates that Ethereum is preparing for large-scale adoption of Web3 in the next decade, and the aspiration of becoming a "world computer" will be elevated back on the agenda;