Ethereum's Next Decade: From "Verifiable Computer" to "Internet Property Rights"

From pushing the performance limits to 1 Gigagas, to building the architectural vision of Lean Ethereum, Fede showcased with the most hardcore technical details and the sincerest emotion how Ethereum can maintain its dominance in the next decade.

Written by: Zhixiong Pan, ChainFeeds

At Ethereum Devconnect ARG, LambdaClass founder Fede delivered a passionate and thought-provoking speech. He abandoned the traditional "world computer" narrative and redefined Ethereum as the first "verifiable computer" in human history. Fede believes that this "anti-fragility," which relies not on trust but solely on mathematics and economic incentives, is the fundamental cornerstone for Ethereum to establish internet property rights and support a multi-trillion scale "global economy."

However, this was not simply a celebration, but a harsh wake-up call. In the face of high-performance public chains like Solana, Fede bluntly stated that the Ethereum community is facing the risk of "death by complacency." From criticizing the false prosperity where "most L2s simply don't work," to denouncing the developer experience of Solidity as "shooting yourself in the foot," he called on the community to break out of its information bubble and regain the ambition and fighting spirit of the "Bronze Age." He quoted a famous saying from a former Intel CEO to warn everyone: in the brutal competition of technology, "only the paranoid survive."

From pushing the performance limits to 1 Gigagas, to building the architectural vision of Lean Ethereum, Fede used the most hardcore technical details and the sincerest emotion to demonstrate how Ethereum can maintain its dominance in the next decade. This is not just a technical roadmap, but a battle declaration against mediocrity.

The following is a summary of the highlights from this speech.

Speaker: Fede (LambdaClass)

Today I want to talk about Ethereum's next decade: from "verifiable computer" to "global economy."

Core Definition: Ethereum is the First "Verifiable Computer"

To me, Ethereum is a verifiable computer.

I've never really liked the "world computer" meme. I think AWS or Google are the real "world computers." They have endless funds and servers, but you have to trust them. The biggest difference with Ethereum is verifiability.

Ethereum is the world's first verifiable computer that does not require trust in the computation itself, but only in economic incentives and mathematics. This gives it a huge advantage over AWS or Google Cloud. In traditional cloud services, everything is based on trust, and trust can be broken.

A few days ago, I saw on Twitter that someone hacked Bing and modified the movie list. If you search for "top ten movies," the results are tampered with by the hacker. In this case, you are actually trusting the hacker. This kind of thing is impossible on Ethereum, unless the entire network is compromised, but that's extremely difficult because you would have to break into multiple teams and multiple client implementations at the same time, and everyone can see the attack process.

This makes Ethereum anti-fragile. Whether it's North Korea, other nation-state actors, or private hackers, every attack attempt actually makes Ethereum stronger, because it continues to run and carries huge amounts of funds.

The Transformation Brought by the Verifiable Computer

The verifiable computer enables true internet property rights.

True ownership: You no longer need to click "agree to terms" and hand your data to tech giants, but instead control everything with your private key. A private key is more reliable than any terms of service.

Global neutrality: Chinese developers, Russian traders, American funds, and Argentine users are all competing on the same fair playing field.

The cornerstone of artificial intelligence: In the next decade, we will tokenize everything, from artworks and land to AI. This is crucial. If the future is driven by AI, hackers will have huge incentives to tamper with AI parameters. We need Ethereum to verify whether AI is running as expected.

Current Status and Product-Market Fit (PMF)

Ethereum has already created a complete economy. Currently, this is not just a $300 billions scale, but processes $3 trillions in stablecoin transactions per month, which is three times the scale of Visa.

Our biggest advantage over Visa or NYSE is composability. All funds, assets, and artworks are in the same place and can be swapped at any time. This creates a flywheel effect. In this sense, Ethereum is less fragmented than global capital markets because it runs around the clock.

Ethereum's current product-market fit (PMF) can be summarized as:

1. Decentralized / permissionless verifiability.
2. Privacy (a feature we need to build at the core layer).
3. Stablecoins (programmable, private, borderless dollars).

Technical Challenges: The Hard Problems We Need to Face

To keep winning in the next decade, I have to "complain" from a technical perspective. Here are the challenges I see:

1. Performance

We (LambdaClass) are building the Ethrex client. My team just told me that we are only 10% behind Reth in performance. Except for Nethermind, Reth, Geth, and us, most clients have performance difficulties.

If we don't raise the hardware requirements for validators, it will be difficult to reach the performance needed to compete with Solana and others.

This touches on a sensitive topic: Gas Limit. In the past three years, we decided not to raise the Gas Limit, which made us slower. I think we can increase speed while maintaining verifiability. This used to be a taboo topic, but now, for the sake of competition, we need to accelerate. If other execution layers can't keep up, we can't wait. Ethereum is more important than any single team.

I'm also reflecting: is Ethereum's goal really to let everyone run a node at home with a $50 Raspberry Pi? I'm not sure. Maybe as long as the verification cost is low enough (a few thousand dollars or even a few dollars), that's enough—it doesn't have to be extremely low threshold.

2. Scalability

I think we should increase the Gas Limit by 100 times. The cheaper it is, the more people will use it. The internet only gave birth to YouTube after it got faster.

Also, I'm a big fan of RISC-V and not a fan of Solidity. Solidity does not represent Ethereum. Although it has contributed a lot, it has many problems. I think RISC-V should become the default standard.

About Layer 2: Frankly, most L2 tech stacks simply don't run. If you clone the codebase and try to run it, it's broken. The current incentive mechanism is "issue a token, then ignore it and wait for death." If you believe in the rollup-centric roadmap, we must make running rollups extremely simple. We're working to make Ethrex able to run L2s with a single command.

3. Interoperability and Decentralization

A few days ago, AWS went down, and some rollups went down with it, which is terrible. The Solana community laughed at us, and I think they're right. We need to move to "Stage 2," we need decentralized sequencers, Based Rollups (reusing L1 pipelines to build L2), and technologies like CommitBoost to achieve pre-confirmations.

4. Privacy

I've received calls from lawyers warning me I was in big trouble, so I feel this deeply. We need to support all developers working on privacy (like Roman, Alexei, Samurai Wallet developers). If I want my mom to use Ethereum, she would never want all her transactions to be visible to the world. The current rules for privacy development are very vague, and we need to fight for this together.

5. Security

There are too few maintainers for the Solidity compiler—only one or two people on GitHub. This is Ethereum's most important programming language, yet it faces a huge risk of manpower shortage. Solidity's syntax is simple, but it's easy to write security vulnerabilities. As a developer who has used more than 20 languages, writing Solidity feels like shooting yourself in the foot. We need better compilers, or long-term solutions like RISC-V ZKVM.

6. Post-Quantum Era

We are working with Justin Drake to develop Lean Ethereum. Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has a huge advantage in deploying post-quantum cryptography, because we allow multiple client implementations and the community is more open, even if it means we're making some radical changes.

Social and Cultural Challenges: Rejecting Mediocrity

I'm a die-hard Ethereum fan, and my company depends on Ethereum, but I have to speak frankly:

We need a "Bronze Age" mentality: Don't think "we've won or we're winning." This kind of complacency leads to stagnation. Look at Intel, once a giant, now left behind by NVIDIA and AMD. We need to stay hungry and ambitious.

Break out of building behind closed doors: Science and engineering require open debate. Important decisions like EOF (Ethereum Object Format) should not be made in closed meetings. If decisions are made behind closed doors, nation-state actors can easily control the network by infiltrating key decision-makers (see the OpenBSD case).

Learn from competitors: I've attended every Solana Breakpoint conference, not because I support Solana, but because I want to learn from competitors. Linux succeeded by copying the strengths of Solaris and open-sourcing them. We need this attitude.

Reject echo chambers: We need to pay people who hold contrarian opinions. My company has partners who often criticize me, and although it hurts, it creates a good feedback loop. Without a good culture, there will be no good technology in the long run.

What is LambdaClass Doing?

We're not just complaining, we're taking action:

• Collaborating with governments in Latin America: In Argentina (Sobra project), Mexico, and Colombia, we're working on on-chain ID for identity verification, KYC, and lending.
• Global infrastructure: Building passport and property rights infrastructure in Africa and Central Asia (such as Uzbekistan).
• Tech stack: Building Ethrex (L1 client), L2 stack based on SP1 and Zisk, ZKVM in collaboration with TMI Labs, and privacy and decentralized AI projects.
• Partners: We're working with IRSA (Argentina's real estate giant) to open up payment channels.

Q&A Session

Q: How do you feel about hosting Devconnect in Argentina at this moment?

Happy. Very happy. I'm glad my mother is here in person; she can finally understand what I'm doing. I'm also happy to show the world what we're working on.

Q: What do you think is the most important initiative right now?

Lean Ethereum. I used to not care much for the "Ultrasound Money" meme. But Lean Ethereum is like a grand cathedral. When I was walking with Justin Drake in a cathedral in Cambridge, he asked me, "Do you think people will look at Ethereum's design 500 years from now the way they look at this cathedral?" I said, "Yes, and you're one of the architects."

Q: How much do you think the Gas Limit can be increased in the near future?

Relying on Nethermind's amazing engineering capabilities (though I don't like the C# language), and our efforts together with Reth, I think we can reach 300-400 Megagas on good servers. In the next few years, with technical improvements, we should aim for 1 Gigagas.

Q: You've interacted with all kinds of people from governments to developers. What do they have in common?

Even those big names (royalty, billionaires) who don't fully understand Ethereum know that this is "for real." They trust "nerds," because nerds are not just driven by money. They see Ethereum as the future winner.

Q: What advice do you have for young builders?

Don't raise money before you find product-market fit (PMF). Money is just fuel; connections and vision are more important. Work with people who are ethical, passionate, and want to do good for society. Do things you'll be proud of ten years from now.