Ethereum must pass the sidewalk test to become self-supporting.
Even if Ethereum developers stop active work on the protocol, it should reach a point where its value will remain, said co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
“We need to get to a point where Ethereum's value proposition doesn't depend strictly on any features that aren't in the protocol,” Buterin said in an article posted to X on Monday.
He said Ethereum's protocols should aspire to be like hammers: once purchased, they remain usable, unlike services that lose functionality when a seller leaves.
While Ethereum has a long technical roadmap, the network needs to reach a point where its core features are fully available, and developers can tinker if they choose, Buterin said.
“Being able to say ‘the Ethereum protocol, as it stands today, is cryptographically secure for hundreds of years' is something we should strive to achieve as soon as possible,” he added.
Vitalik Buterin's seven areas of improvement
To achieve this, Buterin calls for a full quantum resilience solution to protect Ethereum from future cryptographic threats, and includes scalable architecture, zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVM) and PeerDAS, allowing Ethereum to handle thousands of transactions per second.
Buterin adds a general-purpose token model for signature verification, a strong gas program free of security vulnerabilities, and a block-building model that can withstand centralization and censorship pressures, which will be critical to ensuring Ethereum stands the test of time.
“To maximize Ethereum's technological and social strength over the long term,” he said, “we need to tick at least one of these boxes every year, and ideally more.”
Last week, Buterin ZK-EVM verification and the implementation of PeerDAS solutions will give Ethereum high decentralization, consensus, and high bandwidth – to solve the trilemma of the blockchain in the best position for long-term projects to sacrifice each other.
The Splurge component of Ethereum's technical roadmap seeks to implement cryptographic solutions that make the network resistant to quantum attacks. But there is no complete solution yet.
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“Ideally, we will work hard over the next few years to get to the point where almost all new innovations will be customer-optimized and reflected in parameter changes in the protocol,” Buterin said.
Ethereum needs a better decentralized stable coin
On Sunday, Buterin also argued that Ethereum needs better decentralized stablecoins to give people more freedom from the traditional financial system.
Instead of relying on just one like the US dollar, he suggested a stable currency backed by a range of assets and currencies, so its stability is not dependent on a single country.
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