Vitalik Buterin Outlines Vision for Ethereum as a Verification-Centric Network

In an essay published on September 27, Vitalik Buterin proposed a long-term evolution for Ethereum toward 2030, shifting the network's primary role from executing all computations to verifying proofs. Under this model, the current monolithic structure where nodes perform all tasks—downloading blocks, executing transactions, and maintaining state—would be decentralized into specialized roles: executors, provers, and verifiers. By utilizing zero-knowledge proofs (SNARKs), the network can verify the correctness of computations at a significantly lower cost than re-executing them. The roadmap incorporates zkEVM technology, allowing a single actor to execute a block and generate a proof, while the rest of the network efficiently verifies the result.