Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin directly addressed community criticism that Ethereum had lost its decentralized soul. In a reply to a post, he wrote: "In fact, I am trying to do something more ambitious — develop a 'cypherpunk Ethereum that is not ugly' on top of the existing system, in a tightly integrated and interoperable way." He further stated that within 5 years (or sooner, given advances in AI coding and verification), there will be an open path to convert existing systems into smart contracts written in a new language.
The word "not ugly" sounds light, but carries heavy technical meaning. Ethereum has accumulated massive technical debt for backward compatibility and gradual upgrades: the EVM instruction set dates to 2014, the state tree structure is inefficient, and the consensus layer retains legacy baggage post-Merge. Vitalik likened it to "replacing a jet engine in mid-flight once (The Merge), and we can do about four more times: state tree, consensus simplification, ZK-EVM verification, and VM replacement."
FOCIL Locked for Hegota, Controversy Follows
The vision is not a castle in the air. At a recent All Core Devs call, FOCIL was formally locked as the consensus layer core proposal for the Hegota upgrade, expected in the second half of 2026. FOCIL introduces a decentralized decision model per slot, ensuring transaction inclusion is no longer fully controlled by block builders. Ethereum Foundation researcher Jihoon Song noted: "As we scale, the centralizing power of sophisticated participants grows; FOCIL prevents them from censoring transactions." L2 developer Tim Clancy called it Ethereum's most important proposal.
But dissent is sharp. Privacy Pools founder Ameen Soleimani argued FOCIL's benefits are overrated and create legal risk for US validators. Using Tornado Cash as an example: about 90% of validators chose not to include OFAC-sanctioned transactions. If FOCIL forces US validators to include them, they could face prosecution. The conflict between censorship resistance and sovereign law becomes a real dilemma.
L2 Roadmap Pivot: No Longer Just 'Cheap Replicas'
In early February, Vitalik declared the Rollup-centric scaling roadmap "no longer reasonable" for two reasons: L2 progress toward late-stage decentralization has been much slower than expected; L1 itself is scaling rapidly, with the gas cap expected to rise from 60M to 100M or more by 2026. He suggested L2s focus on providing privacy features, application-specific designs, ultra-fast transaction confirmations, and non-financial use cases rather than being cheap copies of Ethereum.
EF's Three-Track Priorities: Scale, Improve UX, Harden L1
On February 18, the Ethereum Foundation released its 2026 protocol priority update, splitting core work into three tracks: Scale (push gas cap above 100M, advance ZK proof verifier clients, expand blob data availability); Improve UX (native account abstraction, cross-L2 interoperability via Open Intents Framework); and Harden L1 (new track focusing on post-quantum cryptography, execution layer defenses, transaction and blob anti-censorship research, and expanding test infrastructure for faster upgrade cadence). With two upgrades (Glamsterdam in H1, Hegota in H2), 2026 is Ethereum's most intensive technical transition since The Merge.
Tech debt repayment is never free. The L2 repositioning already pressures related ecosystems, FOCIL's legal disputes risk splitting US validators, and the RISC-V swap proposal (which could cut execution costs 100x) requires rebuilding the entire developer toolchain. How much patience the market will give Ethereum remains to be seen.