Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on July 4 on X that the long-running blockchain “trilemma” has been solved in practice, not just in research papers. He said one half of that work, data availability sampling, is already live on mainnet, while the other half, ZK-EVM, has reached production-quality performance. In his framing, the remaining task is security.
The statement puts Ethereum’s scaling roadmap back in focus. A decade after Buterin first raised the data availability problem, the network is now moving through the Fusaka upgrade with a path that aims to reduce the trade-offs between decentralization, security, and scalability.
PeerDAS cuts node burden by shifting from full downloads to sampling
A central piece of that roadmap is PeerDAS, scheduled to be activated in December 2025. Under the old model, each node had to download full block data to verify it. With PeerDAS, nodes can verify integrity by randomly sampling about one-eighth of the data. That changes verification from full inspection to statistical checking.
According to the source material, the amount of data space available to Layer 2 networks per day rises by about 8x, while required node bandwidth drops by 90%. The practical effect is notable: a standard consumer laptop could sync Ethereum mainnet and multiple rollups, easing concerns that the system would drift toward dependence on powerful centralized servers.
ZK-EVM reaches production speed, broader verifier role expected from 2027
Once bandwidth constraints are reduced, validation performance becomes the next focus, and that is where ZK-EVM comes in. Zero-knowledge proofs allow a system to generate a mathematically verifiable proof without exposing transaction details. The article says ZK-EVM can now run smart contracts at production-grade speed, with a broader handover of core verification duties expected to begin in 2027.
For developers, the appeal is that contracts can still be written in the native EVM environment without a major rewrite. For users, the pitch combines transaction privacy with near-instant settlement. Ethereum developers are still conducting formal verification work to avoid vulnerabilities, and the roadmap cited in the material points to a full transition before 2030.
Institutional attention shifts to which chain can handle financial-scale demand
The article also ties the technical progress to a changing policy and market backdrop in the United States. As attention turns toward which blockchain can support financial-scale throughput, Ethereum’s modular design is being tested in real conditions. Its model separates consensus, data, and execution, then uses Layer 2 networks to aggregate demand.
That architecture was once criticized as overly complex. In the source’s framing, PeerDAS and ZK-EVM now make the same design look more resilient for long-term financial use. It also notes that upgrades such as Glamsterdam and Hegota, expected after 2026, are intended to raise gas limits and improve block compression, while the community expects Ethereum’s composability and security base to draw more RWA and structured derivatives on-chain.