Tomasz Stanczak - Ethereum 2026: Next Year of Goals - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Uh so we talk about Ethereum in 2026 from the perspective of the Ethereum Foundation with a reminder the Ethereum Foundation is a coordinator as one of the ecosystem participants and Ethereum uh what we plan we help to coordinate everything that's for the future but in the end the Ethereum governance is indeed very decentralized and we might be heard we might be listened to we might be ignored sometimes which means it's not the exact road map but it's the suggestion of the road map based on thousands of conversations that we have every day with uh with institutions with cypher pang people with builders with developers uh so let's see we summarizing 10 years of uh 10 years of no downtime uh 10 years of innovation experimentation 10 years of the progress on defy defy that uh practically really grew and flourished on Ethereum and we for the next 10 years will be uh bringing a lot of new excitement and uh we are being noticed we communicate more about what we want to see on Ethereum and uh we are being seen as after 10 years we really can uh can go forward against any any setbacks that are temporary and when we think about the next 10 years uh we want to think about all the world assets moving to Ethereum so tokeniz ization of all real assets but also native issuance of all the assets in the future. Uh so we think it's it's a very important time the moving of all the real assets to Ethereum but really is a transition and the future simply is native on Ethereum. We want to imagine that we move all the automation all the embodied AI robotics uh for the future will be maybe deployments of the robot taxes uh with the yield going directly to the Ethereum chains uh all the automation that we envisioned somewhere years ago but nowadays it's closer than ever um so we'll deliver the network of the ambient trust uh trust that will be borrowed from Ethereum at the fraction of the cost of the trust that has to be built nowadays by building institutions uh we'll continue thinking of delivering privacy and security uh for everyone for the humanity by default uh through the Ethereum ecosystem for the Ethereum mainet but also for the beautiful network of the L2s on Ethereum and well it's all about the movement to move uh to to make the world permissionless allow everyone to build sophisticated protocols that in the past were uh only available to be built by the large institutions Uh so next 10 years of the technology as well for Ethereum protocol uh leanroadmap.org is the website that shows a bit more ambitious research space of Ethereum foundation exploration of postquantum security exploration of novel mechanism for data availability for the entire revamp and rewrite of very core aspects of the protocol. Uh this is a bit of a side quest.

We have the canonical road map designed mostly by the all core deaf based on the feedback from the community uh stable coins 2026 goals. So definitely want to see more and more payments and defy apps being deployed on Ethereum. Ethereum that nowadays is a default launch space with the lowest cost of capital for any D5 protocols. that we are we are greedy because we think that the progress with Ethereum is progress for the world for the permissionless private and secure connection to the finance. Uh we want to see the further increase of the Ethereum stable coins marketature um the progress of the local stable coins adoption.

Uh so not only USD stable coins but also more regional local stable coins focus and a very easy onramp off for people around the world. uh we want also to see that Ethereum success is shared equally by mainet users but also the ecosystem of L2 chains on Ethereum and nowadays Ethereum is clearly in the lead on the stable coins market over 50% on Ethereum mainet and when you look in the entire ecosystem there's even much more uh I'm showing here some numbers from the RWAXYZ analytics uh stable coins on Ethereum nowadays uh 170 billion dollars and we can easily imagine those numbers going to trillions. Uh those metrics are changing rapidly this year. This is March this year at 130 billion and a movement to 170 billion uh now in September. Uh this is the increase that was unmatched by any other network.

So we see the reignited confidence that Ethereum is the place for real assets and stable coins. uh among the stable coins. So if you see US dollar absolutely dominating so that gentle nudge to bring more nations and more of the global finance on chain uh definitely something that would like to see uh for the community itself. So we think that 2026 does show us uh lots of energy for the next 10 years of Ethereum. So we do want to see reinvigorated community.

We want to see more cross-industry collaborations. Uh so Ethereum has been in the past connecting finance, art, tech, science, governance, all the ideas. We see already a lots of movement on the AI robotics and uh we want to be very much present with the communities and the largest international financial centers like Singapore here uh but also in other capitals Tokyo, London, New York. uh presence there definitely means participation and a big change in the global finance that's happening now bringing new talent new generations reaching out to new energetic and very often crazy wild builders uh something that defines Ethereum innovation definitely our goal and what happens around the world this is the hackathon from the folio where they organized a hackathon on a moving train on the way to Delhi to a large hackathon in Delhi uh fantastic videos from that experience a lot of positive feedback and I think it represents the spirit of Ethereum of one side the huge movement of the large financial institutions saying Ethereum is where we trust to deploy Ethereum where we feel secure where the cost of capital is low on the other side uh a lot of global grassroot movements of the hackers meeting together in various spaces and feeling this is the future for me to build on the frontier tower buildings and the Ethereum hubs around the world bringing people to uh discuss all the cross industry ideas, AI, robotics, decentralized science, uh biotech technologies, future of governance, future of uh longevity, the humanity, all of this together and as vertical pop-up villages and many other pop-up villages ideas. Frontier Tower in SF 16 floors building.

Frontier Tower with the robot fights in the underground and people talking about the ideas like this bringing new generation to experiment. Uh conferences in the large developed uh centers for innovation for developers. uh Eve Denver in the future. We hope to have uh once again big presence in Denver in February next year and also the LATAM area this uh this year we have the def connect in Bonosirus but also e flat happens in so Paulo Brazil is one of those developing like the economy strong economies that are looking at the digital economy stable coins now if confin New York we've heard a lot about that we should be more present in New York and again it's not foundation officially it's all the ecosystem builders if conf is built by the if global team and uh they will they will be in New York with their major conference for the first time uh Ethereum and our communication from the foundation we created much more space for all the builders on Ethereum to communicate to present to participate in the guest threads on the uh Ethereum handles on Twitter it's 4 million followers looking at what happens on the chain and we welcome a lot of DeFi builders, experimentators and stratifi institutions uh to showcase of what they're building with us. Um a global hackathons happening six times per year this year.

For example, the New Delhi hackathon that just finalized with over 2,000 participants. Uh it's always bringing a lot of spirit of hacking on Ethereum that we welcome. Uh this is example of the edge city that will happen in Patagonia and Argentina. Uh this again totally independent organization but the one that we welcome uh so so warmly in the Ethereum community opening the industry to collaborations with innovators with thinkers with global thought leaders uh through multiple different programs and people meeting for a month to exchange ideas and prepare for what to build in the next year. something that they will feel is changing is really changing the world.

Uh you have teams that are uh re uh refreshed a bit. So we reviewed the ecosystem development teams and looked at Ethereum everywhere for promoting uh global physical habs for meetings for for dinners for regular meetings for the uh small teams of developers and founders. We accelerating interactions with the enterprises but what we do we don't really come as a foundation and solve the problems directly but we introduce we mentor we help and we create as fast as possible connections and uh allow people to build together. We create network of people on top of the network of technology. uh dev acceleration, a lot of uh a lot of activity also in the academia with the universities bringing both the hackers but also researchers, new research areas not only in technology side and cryptography but also in the space of of governance, of finance, of economics and we see that not only we are working with developers but also we are very much seen over and over again as a winning technology.

uh that shows that it's coming back. Each time that it's doubted, it's coming back and it hits on Wall Street. It hits with the uh with the European communities. Uh and nowadays also we see how much of interest is in Asia and how much of trust from the institutions in Asia even as we noticed that some of the Asian communities don't see it that visibly on the side of the of the users and uh and app users and so on. So I think that we'll be pushing a lot uh in that direction to make sure that there is also reinvigoration of community of builders and application users in Asia that understand uh why is dominant.

Uh if this year was really uh very much showing that very very much strong Ethereum community uh that is uh it is failing that is pushing back against all the uh all the uncertainty uh governance goals. So we want to be very clear and transparent about where Hreum is going and how it's managing the plans for the Ethereum upgrades. We also want to be precise on time and regular with the network upgrades. Faka upgrade is coming in December 2025 3rd of December uh with lots of improvements that will help with the TRM scaling. The L1 scaling to 16 million gas.

Uh it's the L2 scaling for the blob adjustments and parameters also improvements for the user experience with the support for the new curves. Uh this will be the second network upgrade for Ethereum this year and we hope that we'll maintain this one to two upgrades every year. Well, we hope you're pretty certain that we'll do uh that we push in place a lot of coordination precision mechanism uh for defining what exactly you want to deliver why that but it starts with the surveying community ecosystem institutions cipher banks asking them what do you want to see on Ethereum and providing this to all core devs telling them this is what everyone wants and now please think about how to best implement it and how to execute the research that will deliver the uh world plus solutions for Ethereum uh even more transpired Ethereum governance through the forecast.org website which can give you all the details about upcoming uh forks and also every single recording of the transparent governance process. You can go to this website, check every single meeting of core developers and researchers.

Uh go to the transcripts, press on the transcript and go to a very specific place in the video where this is being discussed. Uh so those type of materials are extremely important for the for the rating agencies for institutions that analyze what is coming. Is the governance transparent? Uh what are the potential surprises? Well, there are very few surprises because everything is built in the open.

uh on the privacy side. So we're responding to requests coming from both the users around the world but also the institution side. We really need privacy for institutions the standards there. We want to deliver privacy of reads from the RPC from the network want to uh deliver privacy of rights sending transactions privacy of proving for the Ethereum scaling with privacy in mind. Um we created institutional privacy task force that will address the uh questions for the privacy together with the compliance with regulators around the world for institutions to launch solutions on public mainets.

Uh also we working on Kohaku wallet uh this is set of standards SDKs and wallet examples and templates for fully privacy oriented wallets. uh Kohaku is built open source available go to the few repositories of the team that we're building it's built on top of umpire wallet which is a fully open-source wallet and then we also look at scaling scaling nowadays in 2025 delivers 60 million gas on it mainet it's uh delivered in the pectra upgrades improvement on the on the number of blocks for layer 2 to use for data availability And with Fusaka as mentioned we're going further. So next year we may see 100 million gas on mainet and up to 128 blobs and then when we understand that to move even further we need a bit of generational shift on technology. Zika EVMs are coming just in time for that delivery. So Zika EVMS is might be what opens for us the path to 300 million gas.

uh they do answer questions uh about how to go to the higher throughput while maintaining the centralization while improving the finality and then really we come with the real-time proving examples probably by around November this year we'll showcase uh a few implementations of ZKVMs that our cable portal proves around 99% of Ethereum mainet blocks in real time so under 12 under 12 seconds with 45 million gas is counted now. Uh and this will be all integrated into the clients and protocol with research active research on the economic incentives of the prover markets. So Ethereum definitely at the forefront of innovation of the ZKVM's provings uh proving and all of that can be also tracked through the if proofs websites. Uh once again our role is to coordinate to make everything transparent to make the work that is done open source and available for everyone and encouraging innovation and competition openly for all the participants in the network. Uh tokenization goals on Ethereum definitely once again saying that Ethereum is winning is leading on the tokenization side.

uh but we want to show that we really hungry for more that we want to see all real assets uh on Ethereum and for that we need to answer questions about privacy standards uh about how to bring more and more asset classes to Ethereum how to ensure that the security of Ethereum that is already at the top class worldclass security level on protocol can be pushed even further so we can answer questions how to maintain trillion dollars of assets in a single set of smart contracts or how to allow 1 billion users to hold significant amount of money on chain. Uh for that questions we have to look at uh a lot a lot of different attack cases. When you think of nation states attacking the network, when you think about uh internet failures, data center failures, all of these we want to uh test and the test net conditions verify how how the network comes back from all the types of failures. um blockchain infrastructure for enterprises on Ethereum is built by many different totally independent builders uh that are succeeding with the monetization of the infrastructure. Here I have examples.

You have Pax has been doing the commodities uh commodities rappers and stable coins systems and leading Ethereum to uh to be unquestionably dominant on the commodities tokenization market. Uh here examples of Robin Hood launching recently announcing launching on the arbitum so layer 2 for Ethereum uh on the finance launching tokenized US stocks on Ethereum announcing this on 3rd of September this month and already leading in the tokenization race for the stocks and placing Ethereum uh at the uh at to nowadays I think it's already about 50% uh of 50% of the of the market this is still the beginning of the stock tokenization. I think the native issue assass will be even bigger topic. Uh centrifuge will have tokenized assets, tokenized funds and tokenized private debt. The same for tradable in the zik sync space.

Uh lipierra and then securize all of those very professional uh builders of tokenization heading to ethereum institutional funds tokenization US treasuries in all of those categories. Ethereum clearly in the lead with the entire ecosystem benefiting from that. We're moving more and more L2s on board and we see that many of the L1s are actually coming back to Ethereum uh as layer 2. Uh many of the exchanges building on Ethereum which is upbeat launching uh the layer 2 network on Ethereum. uh layer X from X layer from the OKX base and in uh so these are from Kraken and Coinbase respectively uh mantel from buy beat on EVM uh and lots of other goals I'm running out of time this is security uh security trillion dollar security project uh that we're tracking and I finalize here there's even much more to talk as you see 2026 is so busy for Ethereum we're launching standards Uh we've heard from Google, you've heard from Cloudflare.

We'll have more and more talk about DeFi and the protocol will go to privacy, security, finality. Thank you so much.