Ethereum aims to become faster, cheaper and more private. The goals for its development, and the challenges the network faces.
Ethereum's goal is to become shared, neutral infrastructure that anyone can build on. More and more of the financial world, from stablecoins to tokenized funds, already uses the network.
Over time, users may notice little of the blockchain itself, just as few people think about the protocols behind the internet.
Development ahead is about giving rollups even more room and making it easier to move value between layer 2 networks. The goal is transactions that are fast and almost free.
Zero-knowledge proofs play an ever larger role, both for scaling and for privacy.
Ethereum has no owner. Changes are proposed and discussed in the open, and only go ahead when developers, validators and users agree.
That makes development slower, but also more robust. The Ethereum Foundation funds research, but does not decide on its own.
Competition from faster blockchains such as Solana is tough. At the same time, Ethereum has to balance speed against the decentralization that makes the network trustworthy.
How well Ethereum succeeds depends on whether the network remains the preferred platform for onchain finance.