The future path of Ethereum

Ethereum faces a life-and-death challenge of how to maintain its leading position as the primary smart contracts platform while addressing the performance limitations that new blockchains have already resolved.

Written by: Yashas Naik

Compiled by: Block unicorn

Preface

Ethereum faces significant challenges in 2025:

• Its price has not reached a new high
• The ETH/BTC trading pair has fallen to a five-year low (0.02)
• Competitive narratives such as L2 and re-staking have failed to enhance its value.
• Meanwhile, transaction fees have dropped to their lowest level since 2020, averaging only $0.36 per transaction.

In contrast, Solana has 3.25 million daily active users (compared to 410,000 for Ethereum), with a daily trading volume of 35.99 million (compared to 1.13 million for Ethereum). Many people are starting to think about the future direction of this second largest blockchain.

Two major developments may reshape the future of Ethereum:

• Upcoming Pectra upgrade
• V proposed to replace EVM with RISC-V technology

Pectra Upgrade (Launching on May 7, 2025)

The Pectra upgrade combines the originally two separate updates (the execution layer's Prague and the consensus layer's Electra) into a comprehensive improvement. Featuring 11 EIPs, Pectra aims to enhance scalability, efficiency, and security.

Key Improvements of Pectra

1. Stronger scalability

• PeerDAS and Verkle Trees technology will enhance transaction processing capacity.
• Optimized data storage will reduce node operating costs.
• The hash tree technology will accelerate network synchronization speed.

2. Lower transaction costs

• Reducing network congestion will significantly lower gas fees.
• EIP-7702 enables account abstraction, allowing users to pay gas fees using stablecoins instead of Ether.
• Batch transactions and customized security features will enhance wallet functionality.

3. Enhanced Staking

• EIP-7251 increases the maximum staking amount for each validator from 32 Ether to 2048 Ether.
• This improvement has reduced the operating costs for large participants while maintaining penalties for violations.
• EIP-6110 moves the handling of validator deposits to the execution layer, reducing the activation time for validators by approximately 48 hours.

RISC-V Proposal (Long-term Solution?)

V God recently proposed to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with RISC-V technology. This change will fundamentally alter the way Ethereum executes smart contracts.

What is RISC-V?

RISC-V is an open-source instruction set architecture. (Essentially, it is a computer language that tells the processor how to execute commands.)

Unlike the EVM designed specifically for Ethereum, RISC-V is:

• Open source and free to use
• Has been widely adopted in the field of computing
• Process complex calculations more efficiently
• More suitable for zero-knowledge proof technology

Why replace EVM?

1. Performance Improvement

• RISC-V is expected to increase Ethereum's execution efficiency by 100 times.
• Transaction fees will be significantly reduced.

Complex operations such as privacy transactions and cross-chain functionality will become more practical.

2. Zero-Knowledge Proof Compatibility

• The current zkEVM system must convert EVM instructions into RISC-V in order to generate proofs.
• This conversion will generate a computational overhead of 100 to 1000 times.
• Native RISC-V support will eliminate this conversion step.
• zkVM like @SuccinctLabs SP1 can run smart contracts directly.

3. Developer Continuity

• Developers can still use Solidity or Vyper to write smart contracts.
• These languages only need to add RISC-V as a backend target.
• User experience will be slightly changed.

4. Implementation Timeline

This is not an immediate change. V's proposal represents a long-term vision, namely:

• Gradual implementation, requiring 2-3 years
• Retain the old system (EVM interpreter) during the transition period
• Ultimately enabling Ethereum to compete with efficient chains like Solana and Monad.

What does this mean for the future of Ethereum?

Ethereum is facing a life-and-death challenge of how to maintain its leading position as the primary smart contracts platform while addressing the performance limitations that the new blockchain has already resolved.

The Pectra upgrade addresses urgent issues related to staking, transaction costs, and user experience. The RISC-V proposal tackles the fundamental execution architecture of Ethereum, which may lay the technical foundation for it to compete with faster blockchains while maintaining security and decentralization advantages.

For users, these changes ultimately mean:

• Faster transaction processing speed
• Lower fees
• New application possibilities (such as on-chain AI, privacy features)
• Achieve better scalability without sacrificing security.

By maintaining compatibility with existing applications while planning better performance improvements, Ethereum aims to evolve without abandoning its core principles or ecosystem. Whether these changes will be enough to sustain its market position and withstand rapidly growing competitors remains to be seen.

If it's not Ethereum, then who could it be?

Recent data shows that there has been a significant change in the competitive landscape. Although the top ten DeFi protocols are still operating on Ethereum, we have seen warning signs that its advantages are beginning to fade.

Projects like Jito and Jupiter are gaining attention in other areas, while Converge (RWA chain of Ethena) has completely exited the ecosystem. These changes indicate that Ethereum's leading position is not secure, raising an important question:

What new technological breakthroughs does Ethereum need to maintain its competitiveness in the future?

According to Nansen, Solana has recently surpassed Ethereum in total staked market value (a significant milestone for the SOL ecosystem), showing that institutional confidence in Solana's staking infrastructure is growing.

Meanwhile, Solana's revenue performance in the first quarter of 2025 surpassed all other chains while maintaining extremely low transaction fees. The combination of high revenue and low user costs demonstrates Solana's efficient economic model.

These developments have added extra pressure to Ethereum's technical roadmap. With Pectra and the potential RISC-V transition aimed at addressing Ethereum's scalability and cost issues, Solana continues to gain market attention with its existing architecture.