From "Verifiable Computers" to "Internet Property Rights": Ethereum's Next Decade

Author: Zhixiong Pan, ChainFeeds

At the Ethereum Devconnect ARG, Fede, the founder of LambdaClass, delivered a passionate and thought-provoking speech. He abandoned the traditional "world computer" narrative, redefining Ethereum as the first "verifiable computer" in human history. Fede believes that this "antifragility," which does not rely on trust but is based solely on mathematical and economic incentives, is the fundamental cornerstone for Ethereum to establish internet ownership and support a multi-trillion-dollar "global economy."

However, this was not a simple celebration, but a jarring wake-up call. Faced with the rise of high-performance public chains like Solana, Fede bluntly stated that the Ethereum community is facing the risk of "death by complacency." From denouncing the false prosperity of "most L2 implementations simply not working" to criticizing Solidity's self-defeating development experience, he called on the community to break free from its information cocoon and rediscover the ambition and fighting spirit of the "Bronze Age." He quoted the former CEO of Intel as warning the audience: in the brutal competition of technology, "only the paranoid survive."

From pushing the performance limits of 1 Gigagas to building the architectural vision of Lean Ethereum, Fede uses the most hardcore technical details and the most sincere emotions to demonstrate how Ethereum can maintain its dominance over the next decade. This is not just a technology roadmap, but also a declaration of war against mediocrity.

The following is a transcript of the highlights of this speech.

Speaker: Fede (LambdaClass)

Today I'm going 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've never really liked the "world computer" meme. I think AWS or Google are the real "world computers." They have countless funds and servers, but you have to trust them. Ethereum's biggest difference from them is its verifiability.

Ethereum is the world's first verifiable computer that doesn't require trust in the computation itself, but only in economic incentives and mathematics. This gives it a significant advantage over AWS or Google Cloud. In traditional cloud services, everything is based on trust, and trust can be broken.

A few days ago, I saw on Twitter that someone hacked into Bing and modified the movie list. If you searched for "top 10 movies," the results were tampered with. In this case, you are actually trusting the hacker. This kind of thing is impossible on Ethereum unless the entire network is compromised, but that's extremely difficult because you would have to compromise multiple teams and multiple client implementations simultaneously, and everyone would be able to see the attack.

This makes Ethereum anti-fragile. Every attack attempt, whether by North Korea, other national actors, or private hackers, actually makes Ethereum stronger because it continues to operate and handles huge sums of money.

Verifiable changes brought about by computers

It can be verified that the computer has realized genuine Internet Property Rights.

True ownership: You no longer need to click "agree to the terms" to hand over your data to tech giants; instead, you control everything through your private key. The private key is more reliable than any terms of service.

Global neutrality: Chinese developers, Russian traders, US funds, and Argentinian users all compete on the same level playing field.

The cornerstone of artificial intelligence: In the next decade, we will tokenize everything, from art and land to AI. This is crucial. If the future is driven by AI, hackers will have a huge incentive to tamper with its parameters. We need Ethereum to verify whether AI is functioning as expected.

Current Status and Product-Market Fit (PMF)

Ethereum has created a complete economy. This is not just a $300 billion scale, but rather the processing of $3 trillion in transactions monthly through stablecoins—three times the size of Visa.

Our biggest advantage over Visa or the NYSE is composability. All funds, assets, and artworks are in one place and can be exchanged at any time. 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 follows:

1. Decentralized/permissionless verifiability.
2. Privacy (a feature we need to build at the core layer).
3. Stablecoins (programmable, private, borderless US dollars).

Technical challenges: the tough nuts to crack.

To continue winning over the next decade, I must "grumble" from a technical perspective. Here are the challenges I see:

1. Performance

We (LambdaClass) are building an Ethrex client. A team just told me we're only 10% behind Reth in performance. Most clients, besides Nethermind, Reth, Geth, and us, struggle with performance.

Without raising the hardware requirements for validators, we will find it difficult to achieve the performance needed to compete with technologies like Solana.

This touches on a sensitive topic: Gas Limit. For the past three years, our decision not to increase the Gas Limit has slowed us down. I believe we can increase speed while maintaining verifiability. This used to be a taboo subject, but now, for the sake of competition, we need to accelerate. We cannot wait if other execution layers fall behind. Ethereum is more important than any single team.

I'm also reflecting on this: Is Ethereum's goal really to allow everyone to run nodes at home with a $50 Raspberry Pi? I'm not sure. Maybe as long as the verification cost is low enough (a few thousand dollars or even a few dollars), it doesn't necessarily have to be an extremely low barrier to entry.

2. Scalability

I think we should increase the gas limit by 100 times. The cheaper it is, the more people will use it. YouTube was born only after the internet became faster.

Furthermore, I'm a big fan of RISC-V and not a big fan of Solidity. Solidity doesn't represent Ethereum. While it has made significant contributions, it has many problems. I believe RISC-V should be the default standard.

Regarding Layer 2: Frankly, most L2 technology stacks simply don't work. You clone the codebase and run it, and it's broken. The current incentive is "issue a token and then ignore it, let it die." If you believe in a Rollup-centric roadmap, we must make running Rollups extremely simple. We are working to make Ethrex run L2 with a single command.

3. Interoperability and Decentralization

The AWS outage a few days ago caused some rollups to crash, which was terrible. The Solana community mocked us, and I think they have a point. We need to move to "Stage 2," which requires a decentralized sequencer, based rollups (reusing L1 pipelines to build L2), and technologies like CommitBoost for pre-confirmations.

4. Privacy

I've received a call from a lawyer warning me I was in big trouble, so I deeply empathize with this. We need to support all developers dedicated to privacy (like Roman, Alexei, and the developers of Samurai Wallet). If I wanted my mother to use Ethereum, she certainly wouldn't want all her transactions to be visible to the entire world. Currently, the rules regarding privacy development are very vague, and we need to work together to address them.

5. Security

There are too few maintainers for the Solidity compiler; only one or two people on GitHub. This is Ethereum's most important programming language, yet it faces a huge risk of insufficient manpower. Solidity's syntax is simple, but it's easy to write security vulnerabilities. As a developer who has used over 20 languages, writing Solidity felt like shooting myself in the foot. We need a better compiler, or a long-term solution like RISC-V ZKVM.

6. The Post-Quantum Era

We are working with Justin Drake to develop Lean Ethereum. Compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum has a huge advantage in deploying post-quantum cryptography because we allow for multi-client implementations and have a more open community, even if it means we are making some radical changes.

Social and Cultural Challenges: Rejecting Mediocrity

I'm a die-hard Ethereum fan, and my company relies on Ethereum, but I must be frank:

We need to adopt a "Bronze Age" mentality: don't think, "We've either won or we're winning." Complacency leads to stagnation. Look at Intel; once a giant, it's now been left behind by NVIDIA and AMD. We need to maintain our hunger and ambition.

Break free from closed-door processes: Science and engineering require open debate. Important decisions like EOF (Ethereum Object Format) should not be made in closed-door meetings. Closed-door decision-making makes it easy for state actors to control the network by infiltrating key decision-makers (see the OpenBSD case).

Learn from competitors: I've attended every Solana Breakpoint conference, not because I support Solana, but because I want to learn from the competition. Linux succeeded by replicating the strengths of Solaris and open-sourcing it. We need this attitude.

Refuse echo chambers: We need to pay those who offer dissenting opinions (contrarians). In my company, some partners frequently criticize me, which hurts me, but it creates a positive feedback loop. Without a good culture, there will be no good technology in the long run.

What is LambdaClass doing?

We're not just complaining, we're also taking action:

• Partnerships with governments in Latin America: In Argentina (Project Sobra), Mexico, and Colombia, we are conducting identity verification, KYC, and lending operations via on-chain IDs.
• Global infrastructure: Establishing passport and property rights infrastructure in Africa and Central Asia (such as Uzbekistan).
• Technology stack: Building Ethrex (L1 client), L2 stack based on SP1 and Zisk, ZKVM in collaboration with TMI Labs, and privacy and decentralized AI projects.
• Partner: We are working with IRSA (Argentine real estate giant) to streamline payment channels.

Q&A Session

Q: How do you feel about Devconnect being held in Argentina right now?

I'm happy. Very happy. I'm so glad my mother was there; she finally understands what I'm doing. I'm also happy to show the world what we're doing.

Q: What do you think is the most important measure at present?

Lean Ethereum. I wasn't a big fan of the "Ultrasound Money" meme before. But Lean Ethereum is like a cathedral. When Justin Drake and I were walking through a cathedral in Cambridge, he asked me, "Do you think people will look at Ethereum's design like this cathedral 500 years from now?" I said, "Yes, and you'll be one of the architects."

Q: How much do you think the Gas Limit can be improved in the near future?

Thanks to Nethermind's amazing engineering capabilities (though I don't like the C# language), and our efforts with Reth, I believe we can achieve 300-400 Megagas on good servers. In the coming years, as technology improves, our goal is to reach 1 Gigagas.

Q: You've interacted with all sorts of people, from government officials to developers. What do they have in common?

Even those bigwigs who don't fully understand Ethereum (royalties, billionaires) know this is "for real." They trust "nerds" because nerds aren't just driven by money. They see Ethereum as the winner of the future.

Q: What advice do you have for young builders?

Don't raise funds until you've found product-market fit (PMF). Money is just fuel; connections and vision are more important. Work with ethical, passionate people who want to do things that benefit society. Do things you'll be proud of ten years from now.