Ethereum blockchain trilemma “solved”: Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the network had effectively resolved the long-standing blockchain “trilemma,” saying recent upgrades had transformed Ethereum into a “fundamentally new and more powerful type of decentralized network” capable of providing security, decentralization, and scalability.

“Now Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVM (expect small parts of the network to use it in 2026) we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth,” he said. tweeted Saturday, referring to peer-to-peer data availability sampling and zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machines.

“The trilemma has been solved – not on paper, but with code running live, half of which (data availability sampling) is on mainnet today, and the other half (ZK-EVM) is production quality in terms of performance today – security is what’s left.”

Claims arise as Ethereum continues to face market volatility following the Fusaka upgrade last month. ETH is currently trading at $3,185, up 1.4% in the past 24 hours, but about 36% below its high of $4,946.05 reached on August 24, 2025, according to CoinGecko data.

On the Myriad prediction market, owned by DecryptDastan’s parent company, sentiment is cautiously optimistic. Users give 56% chance of Ethereum’s next move, taking it to $4,000 from $2,500.

What is the blockchain trilemma?

The blockchain trilemma refers to the belief thatblockchain networks can only optimize two of the three fundamental properties of decentralization, security, and scalability at a time. Previously, efforts to increase transaction throughput required sacrificing decentralization, while highly decentralized networks struggled to scale without compromising performance or cost.

Buterin compared Ethereum’s latest technical advancements to those of earlier distributed networks. He compared BitTorrent, launched in 2000, as highly decentralized with massive total bandwidth but no shared consensus, and Bitcoinintroduced in 2009, is decentralized and secure, but limited in bandwidth because calculations on the network are replicated rather than distributed.

The Ethereum roadmap seeks to overcome this constraint by separating the availability, execution and validation of data on the network.

A central part of this roadmap is PeerDAS, which Buterin highlighted as a key feature of the Fusaka upgrade last month. PeerDAS allows nodes to verify that transaction data exists without downloading it in its entirety by sampling small portions of data that can be reconstructed using erasure coding.

The approach reduces the computational and storage burden on validators, lowers the hurdles to running a node, and is expected to significantly increase Ethereum’s throughput, with a goal of up to 12,000 transactions per second by 2026.

Ethereum’s future roadmap

Looking ahead, Buterin said Ethereum’s scaling strategy will roll out over several years. In 2026, he expects large increases in gas limits that do not depend on ZK-EVMs, as well as the first opportunities to run a ZK-EVM node.

Between 2026 and 2028, further changes are expected, including gas repricing, updates to Ethereum’s state structure, and moving execution payloads to data blobs to make higher gas limits more secure. From 2027 to 2030, Buterin said the network could see further significant increases in gas limits as ZK-EVMs become the primary method of block validation.

Buterin also highlighted the potential of distributed block building. “The long-term ideal of the Holy Grail is to arrive at a future where the complete block is Never constituted in one place,” he said. “It won’t be necessary for a long time, but IMO it’s worth the effort so that we at least have the capacity to do it.”

“Even before this point, we want meaningful authority in block construction to be as distributed as possible,” Buterin wrote, adding that this can be done either in-protocol or out-of-protocol with distributed builder markets. “This reduces the risk of centralized interference with the inclusion of real-time transactions AND creates a better environment for geographic fairness,” he explained.