Network will move beyond Bitcoin-style limits as new scaling tools mature

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the network is approaching a turning point as two major upgrades, PeerDAS and zkEVMs, move from research to working code.

In a post on X, Buterin argued that the combination could shift Ethereum into “a fundamentally new and more powerful kind of decentralized network,” because it targets the core tradeoff that has historically limited blockchains where a system can be decentralized and have consensus, but bandwidth and throughput stay low.

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He framed the problem through two internet-era models. Systems like BitTorrent can move enormous amounts of data in a decentralized way, but they do not need consensus. Bitcoin has strong decentralization and consensus, but it stays low-bandwidth because every node effectively re-checks the same work instead of dividing it up.

Ethereum’s next phase, he said, is about getting all three at once.

The first leg is already live. PeerDAS (data availability sampling) is now on Ethereum mainnet, letting nodes verify that data is available without downloading the full dataset.

PeerDAS is a prototype for Data Availability Sampling (DAS), which is essential for Ethereum’s scaling via sharding. It allows light clients to check if all shard data has been published by sampling small portions, greatly enhancing scalability while maintaining decentralization and security.

The second leg, zkEVMs, is now “production-quality on performance,” Buterin said, meaning the remaining work is safety and proving robustness at scale.

Buterin described this as a practical step toward solving the so-called “blockchain trilemma,” not as a theory, but through “live running code,” adding that zkEVM nodes could start appearing in limited form in 2026.

A longer-term goal is “distributed block building,” Buterin added, where no single party assembles the full block in one place, reducing censorship risks and improving geographic fairness.

The message is that Ethereum’s scaling roadmap is increasingly about splitting verification work across the network, rather than asking every node to replicate everything.