The first few months of 2026 have forced the Ethereum community into an introspection of sorts, one that goes beyond price, beyond technical upgrades, and into the question of what the network is actually trying to be.
Even before this year, builders and executives had a sense that Ethereum was on the verge of another phase of growth, this time driven not by crypto-native users but by institutions and technology. Neobanks, as some argued, would quietly onboard millions of people by abstracting the complexity of wallets and gas fees. Ethereum, in this framework, would not need to gain users directly. It would sit beneath the interface, powering a new financial stack that, on the surface, looked nothing like cryptocurrencies.
It was a continuation of a long-standing thesis: that Ethereum’s success would come from invisibility.
That vision has been shaped in part by years of previous updates aimed at improving the user experience and reducing costs. Changes such as “proto-danksharding,” introduced in the Dencun update, significantly reduced fees for Layer 2 networks by increasing data downloads for transactions, while ongoing improvements to the base layer have made transactions more efficient.
While the price of the network’s ether (ETH) token has been determined by market forces, these updates have together helped move Ethereum closer to a model where users interact with applications without needing to understand the underlying infrastructure.
But that narrative began to change a few weeks into the year, focusing again on the central roadmap.
The debate about the L2
Earlier this year, the network’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued a harsh reality check to the broader ecosystem: “You’re not scaling Ethereum.”
The comment interrupted what, until then, had been a largely celebratory conversation about rollups. These types of networks, also known as Layer 2 (L2) networks, process transactions outside of Ethereum and then aggregate them back into the main chain to make them faster and cheaper. Layer 2 networks have exploded in recent years, transaction fees have dropped and activity has spread, but the deeper question was whether any of this amounted to coherent scaling.
Buterin’s argument went beyond a general critique of progress. In his view, many of the current layer 2 designs are moving away from the core Ethereum model: relying on centralized components and isolated environments that do not fully inherit the guarantees of the base chain. The concern was not that L2 existed, but that in their current form, they may not be providing the type of scaling that Ethereum was intended to achieve.
His criticism highlighted a growing unease.
Fragmentation across L2s, inconsistent security assumptions, and reliance on centralized components were starting to look less like temporary tradeoffs and more like structural risks. Ethereum, by attempting to scale out, risked losing the very properties that made it valuable in the first place: its strong security, decentralization, and its role as a neutral, shared settlement layer where applications and liquidity can interoperate seamlessly.
The L2 teams, for their part, did not retreat but rather recalibrated. Some acknowledged the criticism and leaned toward a future where rollups are differentiated through specialization: privacy, consumer applications, or unique execution environments, rather than simply acting like cheaper Ethereum. Others defended their role more forcefully, arguing that high-performance environments remain essential.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s base layer has made incremental progress on its own. Recent upgrades, such as December’s Fusaka hard fork, increased data capacity and efficiency on the mainnet, allowing more transactions to be processed while reducing costs. Although that increase in transactions came under scrutiny recently, with some calling them “address poisoning” scams.
What this tense episode established for Ethereum is that the path forward requires a delicate balance between structural updates to the base layer and a new generation of specialized rollups that can grow the ecosystem without breaking its fundamental security.
This could also lead to consolidation among layer 2 networks, according to 21shares. “The next year is likely to mark Ethereum’s L2 consolidation: a more agile and resilient layer anchored by high-performance, ETH-aligned, exchange-backed networks,” the firm said in a research report.
The quantum threat
At the same time, another issue, long debated but rarely urgent, suddenly rose up the priority list: Quantum Computing.
The Ethereum Foundation signaled a change in stance, elevating efforts like ‘LeanVM’ and post-quantum signing schemes. What had previously been treated as a distant, almost academic concern was now being incorporated into short-term planning.
The implication was hard to ignore: the network is no longer just being built for the next cycle, but also for threats that could fundamentally break its cryptographic assumptions. The foundation has signaled that it is taking that risk seriously and has established dedicated research efforts focused specifically on post-quantum security.
Vitalik Buterin also outlined a roadmap to protect the blockchain from the long-term risks posed by quantum computers.
The internal confusion
If the scale exposed cracks in Ethereum’s present, quantum risk cast a shadow over its future, and it seemed like the network was taking the threat seriously.
Then came the changes from within.
The departure of Tomasz Stańczak as co-CEO of the Ethereum Foundation marked more than a leadership shakeup. At a time when the network faces technical, strategic and philosophical reassessments at the same time, even subtle changes at the top can signal a broader recalibration.
The move was also a surprise.
The foundation is not known for its abrupt changes, and Stańczak had taken over just a year earlier, following the long tenure of Aya Miyaguchi. In an ecosystem that tends to favor continuity, the rapid churn hinted at a deeper internal recalibration underway, as the foundation reassesses its priorities amid growing demands for scaling, security and Ethereum’s potential role in new frontiers such as artificial intelligence (AI).
‘Trust Layer’
And AI, a topic that has become impossible to ignore, not just for cryptocurrencies but for all industries, began to shape a separate line of thinking for the network.
Buterin described how Ethereum could play a pivotal role in the future of artificial intelligence. The vision extends beyond payments or DeFi, to a world where Ethereum acts as a coordination layer for decentralized AI systems, enabling verifiable results, trust-minimized data sharing, and machine-to-machine economic activity.
That impulse did not arise overnight.
Early last year, the foundation created a decentralized AI (dAI) research unit dedicated to exploring how the network could support autonomous agents and machine-to-machine economies. What seemed experimental at the time has accelerated into something more deliberate in 2026, with the foundation increasingly framing Ethereum as a potential “trust layer” for AI: a system for verifying results, coordinating agents, and anchoring a rapidly evolving ecosystem that, until now, has largely been controlled by centralized actors.
All of this is an ambitious expansion of scope, placing Ethereum at the intersection of two of the most important technologies today.
But overall, the first three months of the year suggest that Ethereum can no longer afford to address these issues in isolation; rather, they are converging.
What emerges is a web that is pulled in multiple directions, each with its own sense of urgency, and the balancing act is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. And unlike previous cycles, where narratives could change as quickly as prices, the problems now seem deeper, less about momentum and more about structure.
These tensions are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon and will continue to shape Ethereum’s trajectory in the coming months.
In the immediate term, however, the focus remains on expanding the base layer, and the next Glamsterdam upgrade, scheduled for this year, is expected to accelerate that effort. The upgrade will likely become a litmus test for the network’s ability to solve problems that can successfully turn Ethereum into a robust, quantum-safe “trust layer” capable of anchoring the global AI economy.
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