Ethereum’s Next Decade: From “Verifiable Computer” to “Internet Property Rights”

Written by: Zhixiong Pan, ChainFeeds

At the Ethereum Devconnect ARG, LambdaClass founder Fede delivered a passionate and thought-provoking speech. He discarded the traditional “world computer” narrative and redefined Ethereum as the first “verifiable computer” in human history. Fede believes that this “anti-fragility,” which relies not on trust but purely on mathematics and economic incentives, is the true cornerstone for Ethereum to establish internet property rights and to support a trillion-dollar “global economy.”

However, this was not simply a celebration, but rather a harsh wake-up call. In the face of high-performance chains like Solana, Fede bluntly stated that the Ethereum community is at risk of “complacency leading to death.” From criticizing the “false prosperity” that “most L2s don’t actually work,” to slamming Solidity’s “shooting yourself in the foot” developer experience, he urged the community to break out of its information silos and rekindle the ambition and fighting spirit of the “Bronze Age.” He quoted the former Intel CEO: in the brutal world of tech competition, “only the paranoid survive.”

From pushing the boundaries to 1 Gigagas of performance, to building the Lean Ethereum architecture vision, Fede used the most hardcore technical details and the most sincere emotion to demonstrate how Ethereum can maintain its dominance in the next decade. This is not just a technical roadmap, but a manifesto against mediocrity.

Below is a transcript of the highlights from the speech.

Speaker: Fede (LambdaClass)

Today, I want to talk about Ethereum’s next decade: from “verifiable computer” to “global economy.”

Core Definition: Ethereum is the First “Verifiable Computer”

To me, Ethereum is a verifiable computer.

I never really liked the “world computer” meme. I think AWS or Google are the real “world computers.” They have endless funding and servers, but you have to trust them. The biggest difference between Ethereum and them is verifiability.

Ethereum is the world’s first computer where you don’t need to trust the computation itself, but only trust the economic incentives and mathematics. This gives it a huge advantage over AWS or Google Cloud. In traditional cloud services, everything is based on trust—which can be broken.

A few days ago I saw on Twitter that someone hacked Bing and modified the movie list. If you search for “top 10 movies,” the results were altered by the hacker. In that case, you’re actually trusting the hacker. This kind of thing can’t happen on Ethereum, unless the whole network is compromised—but that’s extremely difficult, because you’d have to break into multiple teams and client implementations at once, and everyone can see the attack happening.

This makes Ethereum anti-fragile. Whether it’s North Korea, other state actors, or private hackers, every attack attempt actually makes Ethereum stronger, because it keeps running and securing vast sums of money.

The Transformation Brought by a Verifiable Computer

A verifiable computer enables true internet property rights.

True ownership: You no longer need to click “agree” and hand your data over to tech giants—you control everything with your private key. A private key is more reliable than any terms of service.

Global neutrality: Chinese developers, Russian traders, US funds, and Argentine users all compete on a level playing field.

The foundation for AI: In the next decade, we’ll tokenize everything—from art and land to AI itself. This is critical. If the future is AI-driven, hackers will have huge incentives to tamper with AI parameters. We need Ethereum to verify whether AI is working as expected.

Current Status and Product-Market Fit (PMF)

Ethereum has already created a complete economy. Right now it’s not just about a $300 billion scale, but stablecoins are processing $3 trillion in monthly transaction volume—three times the scale of Visa.

Our biggest advantage over Visa or the NYSE is composability. All funds, assets, and art are in the same place and instantly interchangeable. This creates a flywheel effect. In this sense, Ethereum is less fragmented than global capital markets, because it operates 24/7.

Ethereum’s current product-market fit (PMF) can be summarized as:

Decentralized / permissionless verifiability.

Privacy (features we need to build at the core layer).

Stablecoins (programmable, private, borderless dollars).

Technical Challenges: The Hard Problems We Must Face

To keep winning in the next decade, I have to “vent” a bit from a technical perspective. Here are the challenges I see:

1. Performance (Performance)

We (LambdaClass) are building the Ethrex client. My team just told me we’re only 10% behind Reth in performance. Other than Nethermind, Reth, Geth, and us, most clients are struggling with performance.

If we don’t raise the hardware requirements for validators, it will be hard to reach the performance needed to compete with Solana and others.

This touches a sensitive topic: Gas Limit. For the past three years, we decided not to raise the Gas Limit, which has slowed us down. I think we can increase speed while maintaining verifiability. It used to be a taboo subject, but now, for competitiveness, we need to speed up. If other execution clients can’t keep up, we can’t wait. Ethereum is bigger than any single team.

I’m also reflecting: is Ethereum’s goal really to let everyone run a node at home on a $50 Raspberry Pi? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s enough if verification costs are low enough (a few thousand or even a few dollars), it doesn’t have to be ultra-low.

2. Scalability (Scalability)

I think we should increase the Gas Limit 100x. The cheaper it gets, the more people will use it. The internet only brought YouTube after it got fast.

Also, I’m a die-hard RISC-V fan and not a big fan of Solidity. Solidity doesn’t define Ethereum. While it’s contributed a lot, it has many issues. I think RISC-V should be the default standard.

About Layer 2: Frankly, most L2 stacks simply don’t run. If you clone the repo and try to run it, it’s broken. The current incentive is “launch a token, then forget it and let it die.” If you believe in the rollup-centric roadmap, we have to make running a rollup extremely simple. We’re working to make Ethrex able to run an L2 with a single command.

3. Interoperability & Decentralization

A few days ago AWS went down and some rollups went down with it—this is bad. The Solana community laughed at us, and I think they’re right. We need to move to “Stage 2,” we need decentralized sequencers, Based Rollups (reusing L1 pipes to build L2), and technologies like CommitBoost for pre-confirmations.

4. Privacy (Privacy)

I’ve received phone calls from lawyers warning me I’m in big trouble, so I feel this deeply. We need to support all privacy-focused developers (like Roman, Alexei, the Samurai Wallet devs). If I want my mom to use Ethereum, she definitely wouldn’t want all her transactions exposed to the world. The rules for privacy development are very unclear right now—we need to fight for this together.

5. Security (Security)

There are too few maintainers for the Solidity compiler, just one or two people on GitHub. This is Ethereum’s most important programming language, but it faces a huge manpower risk. Solidity’s syntax is simple but makes it easy to write security vulnerabilities. As a developer who’s used 20+ languages, writing Solidity feels like shooting yourself in the foot. We need better compilers, or long-term solutions like RISC-V ZKVM.

6. Post-Quantum Era (Post-Quantum)

We’re working with Justin Drake on Lean Ethereum. Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has a huge advantage in deploying post-quantum cryptography because we allow multiple client implementations and have a more open community—even if that means making radical changes.

Social & Cultural Challenges: Rejecting Mediocrity

I’m a die-hard Ethereum fan, my company depends on Ethereum, but I have to speak frankly:

We need a “Bronze Age” mentality: Don’t think “we’ve won, or we’re winning.” That kind of complacency leads to stagnation. Look at Intel—once a giant, now left behind by NVIDIA and AMD. We need to stay hungry and ambitious.

Break out of building behind closed doors: Science and engineering need open debate. Major decisions like EOF (Ethereum Object Format) shouldn’t be made in private meetings. If decisions are made behind closed doors, state actors can easily influence critical decision-makers and control the network (see the OpenBSD case).

Learn from competitors: I’ve been to every Solana Breakpoint conference—not because I support Solana, but because I want to learn from the competition. Linux succeeded by copying the best of Solaris and open sourcing it. That’s the attitude we need.

Reject echo chambers: We need to pay people who are contrarian. My company has partners who often criticize me—it’s tough, but it creates a good feedback loop. Without a strong culture, there won’t be good long-term technology.

What is LambdaClass Doing?

We’re not just complaining—we’re building:

Latin America & governments: In Argentina (Sobra project), Mexico, and Colombia, we’re doing on-chain ID verification, KYC, and lending.

Global infrastructure: Building passport and property rights infrastructure in Africa and Central Asia (Uzbekistan, etc.).

Tech stack: Building Ethrex (L1 client), L2 stack based on SP1 and Zisk, ZKVM projects with TMI Labs, and privacy/decentralized AI projects.

Partners: Collaborating with IRSA (Argentina’s real estate giant) to open up payment channels.

Q&A Session (Q&A)

Q: How do you feel hosting Devconnect in Argentina right now?

Happy. Very happy. I’m glad my mother is here—she finally understands what I do. I’m also happy to show the world what we’re doing.

Q: What do you think is the most important initiative right now?

Lean Ethereum. I used to not care much about the “Ultrasound Money” meme. But Lean Ethereum is like a cathedral. When Justin Drake and I were walking in a cathedral in Cambridge, he asked me, “Do you think people 500 years from now will look at Ethereum’s design the way we look at this cathedral?” I said, “Yes, and you’re one of the architects.”

Q: How much do you think the Gas Limit can be raised in the near term?

Thanks to Nethermind’s amazing engineering (even though I don’t like C#), and our work with Reth, I think we can reach 300-400 Megagas on good servers. In the next few years, with technical improvements, we aim for 1 Gigagas.

Q: You’ve interacted with everyone from government officials to developers. What do they have in common?

Even those who don’t fully understand Ethereum (royalty, billionaires) know this is “for real.” They trust the nerds, because nerds aren’t just driven by money. They see Ethereum as the future winner.

Q: Any advice for young builders?

Don’t raise money before you have product-market fit (PMF). Money is just fuel—relationships and vision matter more. Go work with people who are ethical, passionate, and want to do good for society. Do things you’ll be proud of in ten years.