Ethereum is entering a fundamentally new stage of evolution. The combination of PeerDAS and ZK-EVM effectively solves the core problem of blockchains — the trilemma between decentralization, security, and scalability.
Vitalik Buterin reported that the Ethereum team effectively solved the blockchain trilemma thanks to the combination of two key technologies. The first component of this pairing, PeerDAS (Data Availability Sampling), is already launched on the Ethereum mainnet. The second, ZK-EVM, is currently in the alpha testing stage.
With the implementation of PeerDAS and ZK-EVM, the Ethereum blockchain for the first time combines all three properties simultaneously: decentralization, consensus, and high throughput. This isn’t a theoretical model but working code — the data availability sampling mechanism is already operating on the mainnet, while ZK-EVM demonstrates production-level performance and is preparing for full deployment.
The ecosystem has been moving toward this result for more than ten years. The first ideas that ultimately became PeerDAS were outlined as early as 2015, and active attempts to create a ZK-EVM began around 2020. Now development is moving into a practical phase, with a large-scale network upgrade expected over the next four years.
According to the current roadmap, Ethereum will receive a significant increase in gas limits without mandatory use of ZK-EVM in 2026 — thanks to BALs (Block Access Lists) and ePBS (enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation). During the same period, the first opportunities to run nodes with ZK-EVM support will appear. Between 2026 and 2028, revisions to gas pricing, changes to the network state structure, and the migration of execution load into dedicated data containers (BLOB) are planned, making gas limit increases safe. Between 2027 and 2030, an even more substantial increase in throughput is expected as ZK-EVM becomes the primary method of block validation.
As a result, Ethereum is gradually transforming from a scalable blockchain into a fundamentally new type of decentralized computing environment, capable of processing significantly larger volumes of data and computation without losing its core values, with a strong emphasis on privacy.
