What price supports are there in Ethereum's roadmap for the next two years?

Several "technical breakthroughs" may provide support for the price of Ethereum.

Written by: Haotian

Based on the technical roadmap of Ethereum for the next two years, share several "technical breakthroughs" that may.... provide support for the price direction (E Guardian exclusive):

1) zkEVM layer1 integration

Implementation timeline: Mainnet deployment completion in Q4 2025 - Q2 2026;

Technical Objective:

• 99% of blocks are verified within 10 seconds;
• The cost of zero-knowledge proof verification has been reduced by 80%;

Significance of Implementation:

• Stablecoins like USDC and USDT will further expand their market share on the Ethereum main chain, resulting in an increase in daily Gas consumption, directly promoting ETH deflation;
• zkEVM zero-knowledge proof technology provides compliance and privacy protection for traditional financial institutions, and large-scale DeFi application scenarios are expected to be activated;

2) RISC-V Executes New Architecture

Implementation timeline: Research and development to begin in the second half of 2025, with a gradual phased advancement from 2026 to 2030;

Technical Objectives:

• The execution efficiency of smart contracts is improved by 3-5 times;
• Gas costs reduced by 50-70%;
• Open-source instruction set architecture replaces the current EVM, better compatible with modern hardware acceleration technologies;

Significance of Implementation:

• The significant enhancement in execution performance will give rise to new application scenarios, such as: high-frequency trading, real-time gaming, AI inference, micro payments, micro transactions, etc.;
• Lower Gas costs will reactivate small transaction scenarios, significantly expanding the user base and usage frequency, creating a positive cycle of ETH demand;

3）Layer1-Layer2 ecosystem collaboration

Implementation timeline: Starting in Q4 2025, with ongoing optimization in 2026-2027;

Technical Objectives:

• Achieve seamless interoperability between L1 and major L2s (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, etc.) ;
• The current decentralized liquidity is approximately 120 billion TVL, and the unified liquidity pool TVL has surpassed 200 billion USD.
• Cross-layer transaction costs reduced by 90%, achieving cross-layer confirmation within 10 seconds;

Significance of Implementation:

• DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate liquidity from the entire ecosystem (L1+L2), creating a network effect of 1+1>2, significantly enhancing the capital efficiency and application experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem;

4) Validator Economic Optimization

Implementation timeline: Starting in the second half of 2025, optimizing in sync with various technology upgrades, continuously improving for 2 years.

Technical Objective:

• The minimum staking threshold for validators is gradually reduced from 32 Ether to 16 Ether, and ultimately down to 1 Ether;
• The annualized yield for staking has been increased from the current 4-6% to 6-8%;
• Simplify the validator operating threshold, support light node verification, and enhance the decentralization of the network;

Significance of Implementation:

• The reduction of validator thresholds and optimization of the reward model are expected to increase the ETH staking rate from the current approximately 25% to over 40% (approximately 48 million ETH locked), further reducing the circulating supply of ETH and strengthening deflationary expectations;
• The enhancement of staking yields will increase the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond," providing fundamental support for its valuation;

5) Sharding Technology Return (ETH 3.0)

Implementation timeline: design and research to begin in 2026, with realization in 2027-2028 or further out;

Technical Objective:

• Achieve millions of transactions per second by combining zkEVM+ with sharding;
• Data availability costs decreased by 99%;
• Distributing blockchain data across multiple shards, allowing validators to only process a portion of the data;

Significance of realization:

• The reintroduction of sharding indicates that Ethereum is preparing for the large-scale adoption of Web3 in the next decade, and the aspiration of being a "world computer" will be elevated on the agenda.