What is the price support for Ethereum's roadmap for the next two years?

Words: Haotian

Based on Ethereum's technical roadmap for the next two years, share some possible "technological breakthroughs".... Direction to bring support to the price (E Guards Special):

1) zkEVM layer1 integration

Implementation timeline: Mainnet deployment will be completed from Q4 2025 to Q2 2026;

Technical Objectives:

• 99% of blocks are validated within 10 seconds;

• 80% reduction in zero-knowledge proof verification costs;

Significance:

• The market share of stablecoins such as USDC and USDT on the Ethereum main chain will further expand, and the daily gas consumption will increase accordingly, directly promoting ETH deflation.

• zkEVM zero-knowledge proof technology provides compliance and privacy assurance for traditional financial institutions, and large-scale DeFi application scenarios for institutions are expected to be activated.

2) RISC-V implements a new architecture

Implementation timeline: R&D will start in the second half of 2025 and slowly advance in phases from 2026 to 2030;

Technical Objectives:

• The execution efficiency of smart contracts is increased by 3-5 times;

• 50-70% reduction in gas costs;

• The open-source instruction set architecture replaces the current EVM and is better compatible with modern hardware acceleration technologies.

Significance:

• The magnitude improvement in execution performance will give rise to new application scenarios, such as: high-frequency trading, real-time games, AI inference, micropayments, microtransactions, etc.

• The lower gas cost will reactivate the microtransaction scenario, significantly expand the user base and usage frequency, and form a positive cycle of ETH demand.

3) Layer1-Layer2 ecosystem synergy

Implementation timeline: starting in Q4 2025 and continuous optimization from 2026 to 2027;

Technical Objectives:

• Enable seamless interoperability between L1 and major L2 (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, etc.);

• At present, the decentralized liquidity is about 120 billion TVL, and the unified liquidity pool TVL has exceeded more than 200 billion US dollars;

• The cross-layer transaction cost is reduced by 90%, and the cross-layer confirmation is achieved within 10 seconds.

Significance:

• DeFi protocols can more efficiently aggregate the liquidity of the whole ecosystem (L1+L2), generate a 1+1>2 network effect, and greatly improve the capital efficiency and application experience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

4) Validator economics

Implementation timeline: Starting from the second half of 2025, it will be optimized in parallel with various technology upgrades and will continue to be improved for 2 years.

Technical Objectives:

• The minimum staking threshold for validators is gradually lowered from 32 ETH to 16 ETH and eventually even to 1 ETH;

• The annualized rate of return on staking will increase from the current 4-6% to 6-8%;

• Simplify the threshold for validators, support light node verification, and improve the degree of network decentralization.

Significance:

• The lowering of the validator threshold and the optimization of the yield model make the ETH staking rate expected to increase from the current about 25% to more than 40% (about 48 million ETH is locked), further reducing the circulating supply of ETH and strengthening deflationary expectations.

• The increase in staking yield will enhance the attractiveness of ETH as a "digital bond" and provide fundamental support for its valuation.

5) Sharding Technology Regression (ETH 3.0)

Implementation timeline: Design and R&D will begin in 2026 and be realized in 2027-2028 or beyond;

Technical Objectives:

• Combined with zkEVM+ sharding to achieve millions of transactions per second;

• 99% reduction in data availability costs;

• Distribute blockchain data across multiple shards, allowing validators to process only part of the data;

Significance:

• The reintroduction of sharding shows that Ethereum is preparing for the mass adoption of Web3 in the next decade, and the long-cherished dream of the "world computer" will be re-elevated;