Vitalik Buterin highlights advancements in Ethereum scalability and the role of L2s in the face of AI.

• Ethereum can scale thousands of times with PeerDAS and ZKPs.
• Latency reduction faces physical and economic limitations.
• AI applications will continue to require out-of-chain solutions.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, shared new insights into technical advancements that could significantly boost the network's scalability. In his view, solutions like PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) have the potential to multiply the blockchain's capacity thousands of times compared to the current scenario.

The developer presented data comparing performance metrics before and after the implementation of sharding, reinforcing that Ethereum's modular architecture is achieving more promising results than previously estimated. According to him, there is no technical conflict between extreme scalability and decentralization—both objectives are compatible within the network's current model.

Buterin, however, pointed out that latency reduction faces natural barriers, such as the speed of light itself, as well as the need to support nodes in rural areas and environments outside of large data centers. Another challenge mentioned is ensuring resistance to censorship and preserving the anonymity of nodes, which makes latency reduction a more delicate objective.

Related Stories

URGENT: Bitcoin could fall today due to two decisive events this Friday.

09/01/2026

Donald Trump rules out pardon for Sam Bankman-Fried in the FTX case.

08/01/2026

Increasing bandwidth is safer than reducing latency

With PeerDAS and ZKPs, we know how to scale, and potentially we can scale thousands of times compared to the status quo. The numbers become far more favorable than before (eg. see analysis here, pre and post-sharding…

- vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 8, 2026

According to him, ideal latency cannot sacrifice decentralization: “Ethereum itself needs to pass the autonomy test, and therefore we cannot build a blockchain that depends on constant social adjustments to guarantee decentralization. The economy cannot bear the entire burden, but it must bear the majority.”

Buterin also pointed to improvements in the P2P system, such as the use of erasure coding, as a viable way to reduce message propagation time without requiring greater bandwidth from the nodes. He further proposed reducing the number of nodes per slot—from 30.000 to 512—as a way to eliminate the aggregation step and allow for latency reductions within a single subnetwork.

With these changes, the co-founder projects a potential appreciation of Ethereum between 3x and 6x, considering only the structural improvements. Meanwhile, moderate latency could drop by 2 to 4 times with these optimizations.

In a provocative analogy, Buterin called Ethereum the "heartbeat of the world." He believes that anyone wanting to build applications faster than this pulse will need to resort to off-chain components. He sees second-layer (L2) solutions as permanent in the ecosystem, especially given the growing demand for artificial intelligence-based applications.

Even in a highly scalable Ethereum scenario, he stated, AI will continue to demand lower latencies than the mainnet can offer. Therefore, L2 networks will remain an essential element—both to meet hyperlocal demands and to achieve global scalability.

Buterin also joked about the idea of ​​operating a staking node on Mars, calling it unfeasible even for Bitcoin. "Ethereum belongs on Earth," he stated, reinforcing that his focus is on addressing the physical and economic realities of the planet with scalable and practical solutions.