TL;DR

Vitalik’s keynote centered around further scaling Ethereum Layer 1, future roadmap and technical upgrades, the collaborative evolution of L1 and L2, and the impact of account abstraction on user experience.

On April 9, during the ETHAsia 2025 event at the “2025 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival,” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a keynote titled “The Future of Ethereum L1”. His talk focused on critical topics including Ethereum Layer 1 scalability enhancements, future plans and technological upgrades, L1-L2 synergy, and the user experience improvements brought by account abstraction.

Vitalik began by analyzing the current state of Ethereum. At present, Layer 1 processes around 15 transactions per second (TPS). The gas limit has recently been increased to 36 million, marking a sixfold rise over the past decade. Meanwhile, Layer 2 throughput has reached approximately 250 TPS, reflecting significant progress in scalability.

The upcoming Pectra upgrade will double the blob capacity from 3 to 6. Currently, 3 blobs equal about 375 KB, generating 375 KB of data every 12 seconds—roughly 20 KB per second—corresponding to around 250 TPS. If the blob capacity increases to 6, the network could potentially support up to 500 TPS. However, this expansion heavily relies on the Fusaka upgrade, expected in Q3 or Q4 of this year. Ideally, Fusaka could boost blob capacity to 48; and with full implementation of DAS (Data Availability Sampling), blob capacity could reach as high as 512. This would allow Ethereum L2s to potentially achieve tens of thousands of TPS.

Additionally, significant progress has been made on EIP-7702, which represents an initial step toward account abstraction. It aims to enhance the intelligence and security of user accounts.

That said, expanding Ethereum Layer 1 remains essential. Even if most users migrate to Layer 2 solutions in the future, L1 must still support critical functionalities—especially serving as a fallback when L2s encounter failures or need to facilitate mass exits for users.

Despite the rapid development of Layer 2 (L2) solutions, enhancing Layer 1 (L1) scalability remains crucial for ensuring censorship resistance and enabling cross-L2 asset transfers. So, what changes might come from further expanding L1?

• The scaling technologies applied to L2 may also be used to scale L1 in the future;

• L2 leverages the asymmetry between production and verification, a concept that L1 itself can also adopt;

• In such a world, what roles will L2 play?

  1. Hyperscale processing (beyond the capacity of native data availability);

  2. Sequencing (lower latency, MEV protection, etc.);

  3. Different virtual machine (VM) architectures.

In other words, L1 can draw from L2’s scaling technologies, while L2 continues focusing on hyperscale transaction processing and the experimental application of new technologies.

Vitalik noted that a series of proposals are expected to roll out by 2026. These aim to significantly increase Ethereum’s gas limits while maintaining decentralization at the node level to ensure safety. Key proposals already introduced for 2026 include:

• Block-level access lists (to enable parallel I/O);

• Delayed execution;

• Multidimensional calldata gas pricing;

• Repricing mechanisms;

• EIP-4444 (historical data expiration): no longer requiring every Ethereum node to store the entire history, instead using peer-to-peer networks to distribute historical data storage;

• FOCIL.

Vitalik also summarized the many benefits account abstraction can offer:

• Enhanced security and user experience;

• Quantum resistance;

• Paymasters: allowing third parties to cover gas fees or enabling gas payments in tokens other than ETH;

• Native support for smart contract wallets;

• Led and followed by L1.

Through innovations like social recovery and Guardians, Ethereum will also offer more decentralized solutions for identity verification and asset control.

In other areas, Ethereum is also actively exploring enhancements in L1 privacy features, EVM upgrades, protocol cleanup/simplification, improvements in quantum resistance at the consensus layer, optimizations in protocol security and simplicity, as well as reducing slot time.

Overall, there is a need to improve L1 and L2, and to consider diversified development approaches for Ethereum—including AI-driven methods—and enhance the application layer to truly drive the growth of the Ethereum ecosystem. Ethereum is striving to be fully prepared for mainstream, large-scale applications, with the ultimate goal of establishing Ethereum L1 as the core of the “world computer,” supporting diverse applications with high security and efficiency.

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