Completing the 10th anniversary, Vitalik explores the value of Ethereum's existence

Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher

On Monday, the Ethereum Devconnect developer conference was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. During the conference, Vitalik Buterin elevated the discussion to explore Ethereum's value within the entire crypto industry. Tomasz Stanczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive directors of the Ethereum Foundation, focused on Ethereum's role during the transition period, emphasizing reliable operation, community collaboration, and continuous innovation. Meanwhile, former core researcher and current co-founder of Etherealize, Danny Ryan, pointed out Ethereum's key role in decentralization and institutions from the perspective of institutional applications.

Moving Towards the Fusaka Phase, Foundation: Achieving Seamless Operational Upgrades

In his speech, Tomasz Stanczak reviewed Ethereum's development trajectory over the past decade, noting that this period successfully established a solid foundation for consensus mechanisms, diversified clients, and privacy-related tools. However, he also warned that future challenges will require broad participation to enhance user privacy, maintain decentralization, and improve personal autonomy and control. Stanczak specifically depicted the diverse participants in the Ethereum ecosystem, believing that these decentralized contributions are key to ensuring network security and operation.

"Ethereum's ability to achieve seamless operation during upgrades is thanks to the efforts of these long-term contributors."

Hsiao-Wei Wang interpreted the foundation's management philosophy with the metaphor "Ethereum is a ladder," using "compound steps" to describe ecological evolution, where each step from research to client to application ultimately expands into the community, becoming a new step for the next generation of builders.

She stated, "This year marks a new chapter for Ethereum. Since the Ethereum Foundation completed its leadership transition, Tomasz and I have set our first responsibility to ensure the stability and smoothness of this transition, as Ethereum is entering a new phase."

Regarding the upcoming Fusaka upgrade for the Ethereum mainnet next month, she explained that Ethereum's entry into "Fusaka" needs to focus on three core capabilities: first, maintaining 100% continuous block production reliability during major upgrades; second, providing flexibility to accommodate diverse technological paths for the ecosystem; and third, the foundation's stewardship governance, which cares for Ethereum but does not control it.

Wang emphasized that Ethereum's decade-long accumulation comes from countless trials and persistence, and the network's 100% availability during all major updates reflects this reliability, allowing users to invest in construction without fear.

Additionally, Danny Ryan, as a former core researcher at the foundation, shared his experience transitioning from protocol development to institutional applications. Ryan criticized traditional finance for its inefficiency, such as severe market fragmentation, with stock settlements requiring T+1 days and bonds T+2 days, far inferior to Ethereum's instant settlement. He noted that traditional institutional system architectures are fundamentally outdated, layered with laws and paperwork.

However, Ryan was surprised by the strong demand for decentralization from institutions. From an institutional perspective, decentralization at the infrastructure layer, 100% online availability, security for trillion-dollar asset classes, and mature application layers with privacy are all necessities. Ryan also emphasized that after bridging the cognitive gap, institutions will realize the necessity of Ethereum.

Ethereum is Repositioning, Vitalik Discusses Its Value in the Crypto Industry

Vitalik's speeches at developer conferences have always framed "Ethereum in 30 Minutes," sketching out Ethereum's current state and future in just 30 minutes. Comparing the content from Devcon SEA in 2024 to Devconnect ARG in 2025, Ethereum is repositioning itself, from technical maps to its value on the blockchain.

Last year, Vitalik primarily focused on the technical details of the "world computer," specifically how L1 serves as a trust anchor and L2 functions as a complementary feature like a GPU. "The reason Ethereum's world computer can unite is that every GPU connects to the most trusted machine through various technologies such as optimistic proof systems, zero-knowledge proofs, SNARKs, STARKs, Jolt, Plonk, etc."

These systems ensure that L1 can verify what happens inside L2 without trust, and L2 can read what happens on L1 without trust. There is an important interaction between these two components. Vitalik stated, "Together, they constitute today's Ethereum."

Last year, he emphasized decentralized technical practices, such as fault-tolerant design in multi-client architecture and diversity in staking pools, and reviewed the journey from the 2013 white paper to the Merge transformation, and then to the preliminary results of the Surge phase, particularly highlighting the significant reduction in fees and improvement in transaction confirmation times (from minutes to milliseconds), showcasing Ethereum's breakthroughs in scalability.

In contrast, the 2025 speech leaned more towards principled reflection, starting with FTX as a cautionary tale. Vitalik criticized FTX as a centralized exchange lacking solvency, emphasizing its essential difference from Ethereum, which is how to shift from centralized trust to a mechanism that anyone can verify. He widely incorporated cryptographic tools such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), introducing the concept of "cosmolocal" (locally global), emphasizing that Ethereum is a global network, not designed to please any specific company or superpower, but to protect the freedom of people worldwide.

This year, the overall technical focus is more future-oriented, concentrating on the return of ZK-EVM full nodes and quantum-resistant upgrades. Last year, Vitalik mentioned the desire to perform SNARK proofs on the entire chain; this year, he clearly announced that ZK-EVM has entered the Alpha phase. Vitalik stated at the conference, "Data from ethproofs.org shows that there are now provers able to prove Ethereum blocks in real-time using dozens of consumer-grade GPUs."

It can be observed that while Vitalik previously focused on discussing technology, this year he shifted to exploring Ethereum's "existential value," reflecting that Ethereum is transitioning from a foundational stage to positioning its influence on-chain.

Perhaps Ethereum is completing its coming-of-age ceremony, just as Vitalik said at Devconnect ARG: "Ethereum can become a banner, leading a world supported by permissionless open technology and decentralized security, a world that is freer, more open, and more collaborative."