The story of Ethereum continues to evolve. Vitalik recently reflected on the original "alternative network" dream from 2014, marking a decade of technological evolution.

What has happened in these ten years? In simple terms, three major events: First, Ethereum completed its transition from PoW to PoS — this is not a minor upgrade but a complete overhaul of the consensus mechanism. Second, network scalability has always been on the agenda. Through new technologies like ZK-EVM and PeerDAS, the "sharding" ideal is gradually being realized. In plain language, this means enabling Ethereum to handle more transactions, faster, and at lower costs.

Interestingly, Vitalik also emphasized a concept called the "walkaway test" — using Fileverse, a decentralized collaborative document tool, as an example. It means that even if a project team stops maintenance, users can still extract their data and continue using it. This actually reflects the ideal state of Web3 applications: truly belonging to users and not controlled by any single party.

These technological advances and design philosophies all point in the same direction — making Ethereum a truly decentralized and sustainable infrastructure. What changes 2026 will bring is still uncertain, but one thing is clear: Ethereum's technological exploration is far from over.