The first few months of 2026 have forced the Ethereum community to engage in a kind of introspection—looking beyond price, beyond technology upgrades, and thinking about what the network actually wants to be.
Even before this year, developers and executives felt that Ethereum was on the verge of another phase of growth — this time driven not by native cryptocurrency users, but by institutions and technology. As some say, neobanks will quietly attract millions of people by removing the complexity of wallets and gas bills. Under this framework, Ethereum does not need to win users directly. It will sit beneath the interface, powering a new financial stack that, on the surface, looks nothing like cryptocurrencies.
This is a continuation of a long-standing argument: Ethereum’s success will come from invisibility.
This vision was shaped in part by previous upgrades over the years aimed at improving the user experience and reducing costs. Changes such as “proto-danksharding” introduced in the Dencun upgrade significantly reduce the cost of the Layer 2 network by increasing transaction data downloads, while continued improvements to the base layer make transactions more efficient.
While the price of the network’s Ethereum (ETH) token is determined by market forces, these upgrades collectively help Ethereum move closer to a model where users interact with applications without having to understand the underlying infrastructure.
But that narrative began to change a few weeks into the year, with a renewed focus on the core roadmap.
L2 Argument
Earlier this year, the network’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave the broader ecosystem a pointed reality check: “You’re not scaling Ethereum.”
The comment interrupted a largely celebratory conversation surrounding the rollup. These types of networks, also known as Layer 2 (L2) networks, process transactions outside of Ethereum and then tie them back to the main chain to make them faster and cheaper. Layer 2 networks have exploded over the past few years, transaction fees have dropped, and activity has proliferated—but the deeper question is whether it all amounts to coherent scaling.
Buterin’s argument goes further than the usual criticisms of progress. In his view, many of today’s layer 2 designs are straying away from Ethereum’s core model: relying on centralized components and isolated environments that do not fully inherit the guarantees of the underlying chain. The concern is not that L2 exists, but that in their current form, they may not provide the kind of scalability that Ethereum wants to achieve.
His criticism underscores a growing unease.
Fragmentation among L2s, inconsistent security assumptions, and reliance on centralized components start to look less like ad hoc tradeoffs and more like structural risks. In trying to scale out, Ethereum risks losing the features that made it valuable in the first place — strong security, decentralization, and its role as a shared, neutral settlement layer where applications and liquidity can seamlessly interoperate.
For their part, the L2 teams didn’t fight back so much as they recalibrated. Some acknowledge this criticism and favor a future in which Rollups differentiate through specialization: privacy, consumer applications, or unique execution environments, rather than simply acting as a cheaper Ethereum. Others defend their role more forcefully, arguing that high-throughput environments remain critical.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s base layer itself has made incremental progress. Recent upgrades, such as December’s Fusaka hard fork, have increased the data capacity and efficiency of the main network, allowing more transactions to be processed while reducing costs. Although the surge in transactions has come under scrutiny recently, with some calling it an “address poisoning” scam.
This tense event set the stage for Ethereum, and the path forward requires a delicate balance between structural upgrades to the base layer and new types of specialized rollups that can grow the ecosystem without destroying its underlying security.
According to 21shares, this may also lead to consolidation between layer 2 networks. “The coming year is likely to mark Ethereum’s L2 integration: a leaner, more resilient layer anchored by the ETH Alliance, exchange-backed high-performance network,” the company said in a research note.
Quantum threat
Meanwhile, another long-discussed but rarely urgent problem has suddenly risen up the priority list: quantum computing.
The Ethereum Foundation marks a change in attitude, ramping up efforts such as “LeanVM” and post-quantum signature schemes. Issues once viewed as distant, almost academic, are now being factored into near-term planning.
The implications are hard to ignore: Networks are no longer built just for the next cycle, but for threats that could fundamentally break their cryptographic assumptions. The foundation has said it is taking the risk seriously and has established a dedicated research effort specifically focused on post-quantum security.
Vitalik Buterin also outlines a roadmap to protect blockchains from the long-term risks posed by quantum computers
internal shuffle
If scaling has exposed Ethereum’s current cracks, quantum risks have clouded its future, and the network appears to be taking the threat seriously.
Then there are changes from within.
The departure of Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak not only marks a leadership reshuffle. As networks face simultaneous technological, strategic and philosophical reassessments, even subtle changes at the top can signal broader realignments.
The move also came as a surprise.
The foundation is not known for sudden transitions, and Stanczak took over the role about a year ago after Aya Miyaguchi’s long tenure. In an ecosystem that favors continuity, the rapid turnover hints at deeper internal adjustments underway, as the foundation reevaluates its priorities as demands grow for scalability, security, and Ethereum’s potential role in new areas such as artificial intelligence (AI).
“Trust Layer”
The topic of artificial intelligence has become impossible to ignore, not only for cryptocurrencies, but for every industry, and it is starting to shape a separate line of thinking for the network.
Buterin outlined how Ethereum will play a fundamental role in the future of artificial intelligence. This vision goes beyond payments or DeFi into a world where Ethereum serves as the coordination layer for decentralized artificial intelligence systems, enabling verifiable outputs, trust-minimized data sharing, and machine-to-machine economic activity.
This push didn’t happen overnight.
Early last year, the foundation established a dedicated decentralized artificial intelligence research unit (dAI) to explore how the network can support autonomous agents and a machine-to-machine economy. What felt like an experiment at the time has accelerated into something more thoughtful by 2026, with foundations increasingly looking to Ethereum as a potential “trust layer” for artificial intelligence: a system for validating outputs, coordinating agents, and anchoring a rapidly evolving ecosystem that, until now, has been largely controlled by centralized actors.
All of this is an ambitious scope expansion that puts Ethereum at the intersection of two of the most important technologies today.
But overall, the first three months of this year indicate that Ethereum no longer has the ability to solve these problems alone; instead, they are converging.
What emerges is a network being pulled in multiple directions, each with its own sense of urgency, and the balancing act is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Unlike previous cycles, in which narratives could change as quickly as prices, the issues now run deeper and are less about momentum and more about structure.
These tensions are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon and will continue to influence Ethereum’s trajectory in the coming months.
In the short term, however, the focus remains on scaling the base layer, an effort expected to be accelerated by this year’s upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade. The upgrade could serve as a litmus test for the network’s problem-solving capabilities, successfully transforming Ethereum into a powerful, quantum-safe “trust layer” capable of anchoring the global AI economy.
Read more: Ethereum’s ‘Glamsterdam’ upgrade aims to fix MEV fairness
