Vitalik 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival Speech Transcript: We do not compete on speed; security and decentralization are the core

PANews Editor's Note: On April 20, at the highly anticipated opening ceremony of the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a keynote speech, deeply analyzing Ethereum's ultimate vision as a "world computer" and its hardcore roadmap for the next five years.

Here is the full text of the speech:

Good morning everyone! Where is the Ethereum protocol headed? I believe that over the past few years, we have seen many significant changes in both theoretical and ecosystem areas. At the same time, we have also witnessed many transformations outside the Ethereum ecosystem, including the infinite possibilities brought by artificial intelligence, the potential realization of quantum computing soon, and advancements in formal verification, cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, and other fields.

I think one of the important things we have been doing is rethinking what is truly meaningful: What is the significance of using Ethereum? Why Ethereum? What characteristics does it have? What makes a decentralized network need to have these characteristics?

For example, how do we integrate these new technologies into the Ethereum protocol we have previously written and the plans for the next five years? What exactly is the use of Ethereum? I believe it has two main functions:

First, Ethereum acts like a public bulletin board. It is a place where applications can post messages, and everyone can see the content and order of the messages published. These messages can be anything, they can be transactions, hash values, encrypted data, and many other things. In fact, there are many opportunities for applications to use Ethereum as a place to publish data while utilizing other types of protocols to interpret this data (i.e., decrypting data and performing calculations on the data).

Secondly, there is computation. Essentially, Ethereum allows you to have shared digital objects controlled by code. These digital objects can be many things; they can be assets, ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, and their meanings are not limited to theoretical aspects (ENS is an example), and they can even refer to control over an organization (DAO is an example). You can do many things, so both are extremely valuable. For dapps-4607">decentralized applications, Ethereum ensures autonomy, security, verifiability, fair participation, and brings together all users.

"Self-sovereignty" essentially means that as a user, you can participate, verify, and ensure your own security, entirely based on your own infrastructure. You do not need to trust any third party to run Ethereum, and if you do not want to, you do not need to trust any third party outside of Ethereum.

Therefore, the ability to verify and validate ensures that the chain operates correctly and verifies that everything that happens is as it should be, while also having the capacity to guarantee the rights of anyone and the right to publish actual information that can be posted on the bulletin board. So this is core; we should view Ethereum as a technological module and think about all the applications that this technological foundation can support. The most interesting applications will be products that combine on-chain and off-chain elements. This includes ENS, prediction markets, etc. Prediction markets have on-chain components (i.e., assets created for each event that can be traded) and off-chain components (one of which is oracles). Sometimes the design of prediction markets or the matching of trading orders occurs on-chain, and there are also privacy-related aspects involved.

For example, for decades, people have been researching cryptographic protocols aimed at simplifying or achieving secure electronic voting. Many such protocols often rely on public bulletin boards where people can post information. In this case, they are encrypted ballots, ensuring that everyone can participate. Anything related to privacy must include an on-chain component (for publishing data) and an off-chain component (for interpreting data).

If it interprets the data, it must be done off-chain through a private protocol. So, we have talked a lot about L2 (Layer 2). In my view, to judge which type of L2 makes sense, you first need to understand which type of L2 does not make sense: if you just copy Ethereum, scale it up 100 times, and make it more centralized, then that is meaningless. I believe that truly meaningful L2 is when you start examining various applications and ask them what off-chain components they need? What else do they need besides L1? Then you go and build those things.

What does this mean for Ethereum? We need to scale data, we need the capability to publish more data on-chain. The PeerDAS introduced in last year's recent hard fork already includes this, but we still need to push further. Scaling computational power is also important because, as part of the Ethereum chain, scaling computational power can help different applications combine together and communicate without intermediaries.

If you visit the roadmap website (roadmap.org), you can find a roadmap designed for the next five years. The core goals of the protocol in the short term are: first, short-term scaling, continuing to actively raise the Gas limit; second, starting the rollout of zkEVM. zkEVM allows Ethereum to scale more and perform more complex computations while still being easy to verify on-chain information. There is also early preparation for the post-quantum era. We have been thinking about quantum computing for years; we recognized it as a risk long ago, and we have some measures in place. Soon, in the short term, we will improve Ethereum's quantum security and refine the entire roadmap.

For example, in the end, all parts of Ethereum will achieve complete quantum security and be very efficient. Additionally, the block construction process will be improved, and support for privacy will be strengthened. Therefore, there are many EIP proposals for short-term scaling that will be applied in the next phase, such as Block Access List which can achieve parallelization; Gas repricing can improve efficiency and make raising the Gas limit safer.

ePBS (separation of proposer and builder) makes it safer for Ethereum blocks to take longer to validate and also improves the capability of nodes to download states. There is also EIP-8141 (account abstraction proposal), which is very simple yet powerful. Essentially, a transaction is a series of calls, where one call may be verification and another may be execution. This allows Ethereum to easily achieve native support for smart contract wallets for paying others' transactions, supporting quantum-resistant signature algorithms and privacy protocols.

So, this broadens the use of Ethereum, thus supporting many functions. Quantum-resistant signature algorithms do exist; they have been around for 20 years, and we know what they are and how to build them. The problem is that they are not efficient. A quantum-resistant signature takes up 2000-3000 bytes, while current signatures are only 64 bytes; it also costs 200,000 Gas on-chain, while now it only costs 3000 Gas. Therefore, there are two types of signatures we can use: one is hash-based, and the other is lattice-based signatures. Our idea is to increase vectorization and incorporate it into the EVM, essentially using the same logic that allows computers to run artificial intelligence quickly. We are actively working to make signatures resistant to quantum attacks and more efficient.

State storage, account balances, and execution scaling of smart contracts are relatively easy, but storage scaling is relatively difficult, and there is much work to be done; we must strive in this area. So, this is all the short-term and long-term planning, and this is the direction we truly want Ethereum to develop. Ethereum is not meant to compete with high-frequency trading platforms; Ethereum is not meant to be the fastest chain; Ethereum aims to be a secure chain, a decentralized chain, a chain that will stay online and be one you can always rely on.

So, one goal is to maximize security consensus. This means that if the network is secure, it can withstand 49% of node failures and can actually withstand almost all nodes going offline, thus having the same characteristics as btc-42">Bitcoin. If there is a problem with the network, you can still maintain 33% security certainty. This is the first part.

The second part is to formalize verification of everything. And we have already started actively applying artificial intelligence to generate code proofs, proving that the software version running Ethereum indeed possesses its necessary characteristics. We have made progress, which was not possible two years ago. Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, so we are leveraging this to pursue extreme simplicity, keeping the long-term protocol as simple as possible and maximizing preparedness for the future.

Therefore, a network needs to be tested offline. If a network needs to be applied, you can rely on it, even if there is no power outlet available. Because this is essentially the same principle that Bitcoin pursues. If you want to be a long-term holder, you need to ensure the security of your digital assets in the long term; you need to rely on something that can continuously guarantee security, whose security does not depend on the continued existence of a particular team or the ongoing work of a particular team. Ethereum's consensus combines the advantages of two methods: the Bitcoin-style longest chain rule and the BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) method. This is ultimate certainty, while possessing optimal security characteristics, quantum security, and rapid finality.

Therefore, finality is achieved within one to three block slots, and it is expected that the chain will achieve finality in about 10-20 seconds, or even shorter. zkVM allows you to verify the chain without relying on large computers to personally run all operations. Everyone should verify the chain before trusting it, even your mobile phone and IoT devices should verify the chain. The zero-knowledge virtual machine zkVM is already fast enough to prove that real-time virtual machine execution is feasible. This year's goal is to make them secure enough, starting with a small proportion of the network using zkVM and then gradually increasing this proportion. By 2028, this will enable it to scale and handle more transactions without sacrificing decentralization.

What is the vision of these things? Ethereum is a world computer. It is a globally shared layer for making commitments, publishing data, and recording actions; it is a platform where data can be published, where it can be proven that data has been published, and it can be proven that data has not been published, and it is open for use by everyone; it is also a globally shared layer for ensuring the execution of high-value rules. Ethereum needs to have the greatest robustness and be extremely easy to verify. I believe that in the future, with artificial intelligence, it will actually become easier, simpler than we imagine, to truly ensure software security.

If you want to ensure software security, but people are unwilling to ensure it, then software vulnerabilities will be ten times more than before, and the number of attacks will also be ten times more than before. Therefore, as a blockchain, Ethereum needs to first ensure security and then decentralization. When these conditions are guaranteed, it should provide this security to users as much as possible. Therefore, if you intend to build decentralized applications, ensuring self-sovereignty, security, verifiability, and ensuring user participation—this includes finance, decentralized social, identity, and a part of financial and non-financial applications (including ENS, prediction markets, etc.), covering many aspects. Ethereum can make application development simple; by default, this is the core goal.

The roadmap for the next four years is designed around this goal, thank you!

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