Most crypto users entered the space during the COVID-19 lockdown era, when smart contracts were already widespread and Ethereum felt like the polished sibling of Bitcoin, but backed by a visible team. But the Ethereum of today is nearly unrecognizable from its 2019 version.

The network has transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake during The Merge. Gas fees that once soared above 1 ETH per transaction have been tamed (mostly). Layer 2s now carry much of the activity, and Ethereum continues to evolve with the kind of speed rarely seen in open-source infrastructure.

This article breaks down that roadmap — what’s coming, why it matters, and how it could change the way we all use Ethereum.

The Surge: Scaling to 100,000 TPS

Ethereum's biggest headache over the years? Scalability. While Layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism have taken some weight off the base layer, they’re still just that — layers stacked on top of a system that wasn’t built for hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.

Danksharding.

Ethereum roadmap dives into how Ethereum is merging the best of two ideas: rollups and sharding. The key innovation here is the introduction of "blobs" (yes, that's the technical term).

These blobs are large chunks of data that rollups can post to Ethereum at a much lower cost. That’s where proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) comes in. It’s already activated the Ethereum Improvement Proposal, the stepping stone to full danksharding and a big leap in how Ethereum handles throughput.

Danksharding is Ethereum's big bet on scaling — think of it like splitting the network into smarter, lighter pieces that can handle their own business. Instead of every node doing everything, the work gets shared. That’s what sharding is all about.

Danksharding takes this concept and adds a twist: a single proposer system and “blobs” of cheap, temporary data that rollups can use to post transactions efficiently. It’s designed to scale Ethereum to 100,000+ transactions per second without sacrificing decentralization or composability.

The Scourge: Addressing Centralization in Ethereum’s Block Production

As Ethereum grows, so do concerns about centralization — especially in how blocks are built and how staking is managed. The Scourge phase is Ethereum’s direct response to these issues, aiming to keep the network fair, neutral, and decentralized for the long haul.

Let’s break it down.

The first is MEV, which is the maximum extractable value. This is basically the profit a validator can make by reordering, including, or excluding transactions in a block. It’s a big deal because it creates an uneven playing field for users and can even lead to manipulative behaviors like sandwich attacks. In fact, by late 2024, just two block builders were responsible for over 88% of all blocks. That’s a huge red flag for decentralization.

To fix this, Ethereum developers are now researching the implementation of the Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS). This splits the job of choosing what goes into a block (builders) from the job of proposing the block to the network (validators). The idea? No one party should have too much control. Moreover, proposals like Fork-choice-enforced inclusion lists (FOCIL) and Multiple Concurrent Proposers (MCP) aim to keep the system fair by giving validators more choice and making it harder to censor or manipulate transactions.

The Scourge also tackles the rise of liquid staking services that let you stake ETH while keeping it liquid. Sounds great, but if too much ETH ends up in the hands of just a few staking providers, it becomes a centralization risk. To address this, researchers are exploring things like two-tier staking (with different risk levels), stake limits per user or provider, and softer penalties to avoid making smaller stakers overly cautious.

While this phase might not get the same hype as scaling or privacy upgrades, it’s just as important. The Scourge is about protecting Ethereum’s core promise: a decentralized, trustless, and credibly neutral platform that anyone can use — and no one can control.

The Verge & The Purge: Stateless Clients and the Future of Ethereum Nodes

Vitalik Buterin sees The Verge as one of Ethereum’s most critical upgrades — not because it’s flashy, but because it protects the very idea of decentralization. Today, running a full Ethereum node isn’t easy — it takes hundreds of gigabytes of storage and constant syncing. Most users don’t even try; they outsource the job to centralized services like Infura. That’s convenient, but it defeats the purpose of a decentralized network.

The Verge introduces the idea of stateless clients — nodes that don’t need to store Ethereum’s entire history to participate. Instead, they use something called witnesses — cryptographic proofs attached to blocks that only include the specific data needed to verify them. It’s like having a receipt for just one purchase, instead of the ledger of the whole shopping mall.

Supporting this are technologies like Verkle Trees and STARK-based hash trees (STARK — Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), which allow these proofs to be small and fast. That means one day, you could verify Ethereum from your phone, smartwatch, or even a browser extension, with just a few GB of RAM.

Ethereum’s also working on SNARK-based proofs for execution and consensus (SNARK — succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge), so even validating what happens in a block won’t require heavy resources. However, there’s an open debate: Verkle Trees are efficient but could be broken by quantum computing; STARKs are quantum-safe but harder to implement. So, Ethereum may adopt a hybrid approach.

If all goes well, this upgrade will let anyone verify Ethereum without needing to trust a middleman or own a data center. That’s the goal: full security and participation, on your own terms. Expect steady progress on upgrades like EIP-4762 and Poseidon-based hashing through 2026 and beyond.

The Splurge: Privacy Becomes the Norm

Currently, Ethereum is fully transparent — every transaction, every wallet balance, every app interaction is out in the open. That transparency is great for auditability, but terrible for privacy. That’s why Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum research team are building a multi-layered privacy roadmap designed to shift Ethereum from fully public by default to selectively private when needed.

The plan starts with stealth addresses — one-time wallet addresses that let you receive assets without revealing your identity on-chain. Then come dapp-specific keys, ensuring your activity on one app doesn’t link to another. With encrypted read operations, even simple actions like checking your balance won’t tip off observers. And on the networking layer, IP obfuscation will help hide your physical location and metadata.

All of this is built on zero-knowledge cryptography — the same tech behind zk-rollups — so verification happens without exposing any sensitive data. The goal is to make Ethereum more private by default without breaking compatibility or usability across existing apps.

The Stages in One Line Each

That was a lot to read, so here’s a quick recap of each ETH epoch for you — what each phase actually aims to do:

• The Merge: Swapped proof-of-work for proof-of-stake, cutting energy use and laying the groundwork for upgrades to come.
• The Surge: Supercharges Ethereum’s speed with danksharding and blobs—aiming for 100,000+ TPS.
• The Scourge: Puts decentralization back in focus by fighting MEV and builder centralization.
• The Verge: Makes running a node possible on your laptop or even a smartwatch.
• The Purge: Clears out legacy cruft and makes Ethereum lighter and easier to maintain.
• The Splurge: Polishes the rest — privacy, account abstraction, and future-proof cryptography.

And it may seem that Ethereum developers work on each epoch consequently, but in fact, all the directions are built in parallel.

Summary

While we see hundreds of solutions oriented on chasing hype and how they fail, there is Ethereum, building steadily according to it’s roadmap. Quietly, methodically, and sometimes slowly. But every phase — scaling, decentralization, privacy — brings it closer to becoming a part of a truly decentralized internet.

In short: Ethereum is getting faster, lighter, more private, and easier to use. And it’s doing all that without giving up what made it special in the first place.

So what’s next? More upgrades, fewer bottlenecks, and a lot more usability.