Vitalik Buterin published a Sept. 27 essay describing Ethereum's path to becoming a "cryptographic world computer" by 2030, where compact proofs replace repeated re-execution of every transaction. Part of that vision, PeerDAS, already went live with the December 2025 Fusaka upgrade, while the larger shift to base-layer execution proofs remains under development. Buterin also flagged access to Ethereum's growing state, not proof generation, as the harder problem left to solve.
Vitalik Buterin's Sept. 27 essay, "The cryptographic world computer," describes Ethereum moving from a system where every validator repeats the same computation toward one where data gets sampled and execution gets checked through succinct proofs. A prover would do the heavy computation; other nodes would verify the result far more cheaply than by re-executing it themselves.
PeerDAS is live, base-layer proofs are not
The Ethereum Foundation's February 2026 protocol update confirms PeerDAS arrived with the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, letting validators sample blockchain data instead of downloading all of it. Ethereum's documentation says extended blob data splits into 128 columns, and a regular node joins at least 8 column subnets. The Foundation also said Fusaka enabled an eightfold increase in theoretical blob capacity, though actual throughput still depends on scheduled parameter increases and rollup usage.
A network-wide shift to verifying execution proofs for base-layer blocks, by contrast, is not described as deployed yet. Buterin's essay is a personal technical vision rather than a specification ratified by Ethereum's client teams.
State access, not proving speed, is the harder constraint
CryptoSlate reported that Buterin identified managing and parallelizing access to Ethereum's growing state as the more systemically difficult challenge facing the architecture. Making computation verifiable does not remove the need to obtain the account balances and contract storage that computation depends on.
Researchers are pursuing weak statelessness, which would let most validators verify blocks without maintaining the full state database, while block producers keep the data needed to construct blocks. That proposal remains in research and depends on further architecture changes, according to CryptoSlate.
Hegota marks a transition, not a deadline
Buterin named Hegota, a fork planned for 2027, as possibly the last upgrade whose components a 2015 Ethereum observer would recognize. Later work in his account leans on recursive proofs, formal verification, optimized consensus, and quantum-resistant cryptography. Neither the essay nor any target date guarantees each component ships on schedule — Ethereum upgrades still require specifications, client implementations, test networks, and coordination among participants before any fork activates.
Sources: crypto.news, CryptoSlate
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