Ethereum Technology Roadmap Outlook: Breakthrough Developments That May Bring Price Support in the Next Two Years

Ethereum, as a leading smart contract platform, is receiving significant attention for its future development. According to the latest technical roadmap, there may be several major technological breakthroughs in the next two years, and these innovations are expected to provide strong support for the value of Ethereum. Let's explore these potential technological advancements and their possible impacts.

1. zkEVM integrated into Layer 1 network

It is expected that zkEVM technology will be integrated into the Ethereum mainnet between the fourth quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. The main goals of this technology upgrade include:

• 99% of blocks can be verified within 10 seconds
• The cost of zero-knowledge proof verification has been reduced by 80%.

The important impact that this breakthrough may bring:

• The market share of major stablecoins on the Ethereum main chain may significantly increase, driving up daily Gas consumption, thereby accelerating ETH deflation.
• Zero-knowledge proof technology provides better privacy protection for traditional financial institutions and is expected to stimulate large-scale institutional-level DeFi applications.

2. RISC-V Execution Architecture Innovation

Starting from the second half of 2025, the development of the new RISC-V execution architecture is expected to be promoted in phases between 2026 and 2030, aiming to achieve:

• The execution efficiency of smart contracts has improved by 3-5 times.
• Gas costs reduced by 50-70%
• Adopt an open-source instruction set architecture to enhance compatibility with modern hardware acceleration technologies.

The potential impact of this technological advancement:

• Significantly improve execution performance, potentially giving rise to entirely new application scenarios, such as high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, etc.
• Reducing gas costs is expected to reactivate small transactions, expand the user base and usage frequency, and create a positive cycle of ETH demand.

3. Synergy between Layer 1 and Layer 2 Network Ecosystems

The ecological collaboration project is planned to launch in the fourth quarter of 2025 and will continue to optimize between 2026-2027, with goals including:

• Achieve seamless interoperability between the mainnet and major Layer 2 networks
• The integrated liquidity pool size is expected to exceed 200 billion USD.
• Cross-layer transaction costs reduced by 90%, achieving cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds.

The impact that this progress may bring:

• DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate liquidity across the entire ecosystem, creating significant network effects and greatly enhancing the capital efficiency and user experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

4. Optimizing the Validator Economic Model

Starting in the second half of 2025, with various technological upgrades being carried out simultaneously, it is expected to take two years to complete. The main objectives include:

• The minimum staking threshold for validators is gradually decreasing and may eventually drop to 1 ETH.
• The annualized yield for staking has increased to 6-8%.
• Simplified validator operation requirements, supporting light node verification, improving the degree of decentralization of the network.

The potential impacts of these optimizations:

• The ETH staking rate is expected to increase from the current approximately 25% to over 40%, further reducing the circulating supply and strengthening deflationary expectations.
• The enhancement of staking yield will increase the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond" and provide fundamental support for its valuation.

5. Sharding Technology Reintroduced (ETH 3.0)

It is expected to begin design and development in 2026, with possible implementation in 2027-2028 or further in the future. The main technical objectives include:

• Combining zkEVM and sharding technology to achieve a processing capacity of millions of transactions per second.
• Data availability costs reduced by 99%
• Distributing blockchain data across multiple shards, validators only need to process a portion of the data.

The potential significance of this technological breakthrough:

• The reintroduction of sharding technology indicates that Ethereum is preparing for the mass adoption of Web3 in the next decade, and the vision of a "world computer" is expected to be back on the agenda.

If these technological advances can be successfully implemented, they will greatly enhance the performance, scalability, and economic model of the Ethereum network, and are expected to provide long-term support for the ETH price. However, investors should also be aware that technological developments are often accompanied by uncertainty and risk, and need to remain cautious and vigilant.