Completing the 10th Anniversary, Vitalik discusses the value of Ethereum's existence.

Author: Chloe, ChainCatcher

The Ethereum Devconnect developer conference was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Monday. During the conference, Vitalik Buterin elevated the discussion to explore the value of Ethereum in the entire cryptocurrency industry. The Ethereum Foundation's co-executive directors, Tomasz Stanczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang, 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 both decentralization and institutional applications.

Moving towards the Fusaka stage, the foundation: will achieve uninterrupted operational upgrades.

Tomasz Stanczak reviewed the development trajectory of Ethereum over the past decade during his speech. He pointed out 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 involve strengthening user privacy, maintaining decentralization, and enhancing personalized autonomous control, which will require broad participation from more contributors. Stanczak specifically depicted the participants from different fields within the Ethereum ecosystem at the conference, believing that these decentralized contributions are key to ensuring the network's security and operation.

“Ethereum has achieved uninterrupted operation during its upgrades, thanks to the efforts of these long-term investors.”

Hsiao-Wei Wang interprets the foundation's management philosophy with “Ethereum is a ladder,” using the metaphor of “step-by-step compounding” to describe ecological evolution. This means starting from research to the client, to applications, and finally expanding to the community, where each step becomes a new platform for the next generation of builders.

She stated, “This year marks a new chapter for Ethereum. Since the Ethereum Foundation completed the transition to a new leadership team, the first responsibility that Tomasz and I set for ourselves is to ensure the stability and smoothness of this transition, as Ethereum is entering a new phase.”

Regarding the Ethereum mainnet's Fusaka upgrade next month, she explained at the meeting that Ethereum's transition to “Fusaka” needs to focus on three core capabilities: the first is maintaining 100% continuous block production reliability during major upgrades; the second is the flexibility to leave room for diverse technological pathways for the ecosystem; and the foundation cares about Ethereum but does not control Ethereum's stewardship ( Stewardship ).

Wang emphasized that the ten-year accumulation of Ethereum comes from countless trials and perseverance, and the network has maintained a 100% availability rate during all major updates. It is this reliability that allows users to invest in building without fear.

Additionally, Danny Ryan, as a former core researcher at the foundation, shared his experience of transitioning from protocol development to institutional applications. Ryan criticized the inefficiencies of traditional finance, such as severe market fragmentation, with stock settlements taking T+1 days and bonds T+2 days, which are far inferior to Ethereum's instant settlement. The traditional institutional system architecture is fundamentally outdated, resembling a stack of layers of laws and paperwork.

However, Ryan was also surprised by the strong demand for decentralization from institutions. From the institutional perspective, necessities include decentralized infrastructure layers, 100% online availability, security for trillion-dollar asset classes, as well as mature application layers and privacy, among others. Ryan also emphasized that after bridging the cognitive gap, institutions will realize the necessity of Ethereum.

Ethereum is repositioning, Vitalik discusses the value of existence in the cryptocurrency industry.

Vitalik has always used “Ethereum in 30 Minutes” as a framework in his speeches at developer conferences, outlining the current state and future of Ethereum in just 30 minutes. Comparing the content from Devcon SEA in 2024 to Devconnect ARG in 2025, Ethereum is being repositioned, from the technical roadmap to the value on the blockchain.

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

These systems effectively ensure that L1 can verify what happens internally in L2 without trust, while L2 can also read what occurs on L1 without trust. There is a significant interaction between these two components, and Vitalik stated, “Together they make up today's Ethereum.”

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

In contrast, the speech in 2025 leans more towards principled reflection, starting with FTX as a cautionary example. Vitalik criticizes FTX for lacking solvency as a centralized exchange and emphasizes its essential difference from Ethereum, which is the shift from centralized trust to a mechanism that anyone can verify. He extensively incorporates cryptographic tools, such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), and introduces the concept of “cosmolocal” ( in a globally localized ) context, stressing that Ethereum is a global network, not designed to please any particular company or superpower, but to protect the freedom of people around the world.

This year, the overall technology aspect is more future-oriented, focusing on the full node return of ZK-EVM and quantum resistance upgrades. Last year, Vitalik mentioned wanting to implement SNARK proofs for the entire chain, and this year he officially announced that ZK-EVM has entered the Alpha stage. Vitalik stated at the conference, “Data from ethproofs.org shows that there are now provers capable of real-time proof of Ethereum blocks using dozens of consumer-grade GPUs.”

It can be observed that Vitalik has focused on discussing technology in previous years, while this year he has shifted to exploring the “value of existence” of Ethereum, reflecting that Ethereum is transitioning from the infrastructure phase to positioning its influence on the chain.

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