Vitalik Buterin Outlines Five-Year Ethereum Scaling Roadmap Targeting Execution, Data and State Resources

Vitalik Buterin published a long-form article on Ethereum Research on Feb. 27, 2026, titled "Hyperscaling state by creating new forms of state", outlining a five-year roadmap to scale Ethereum's execution, data and state resources. He describes short-term execution gains of 10x to 30x via Block Access Lists (BAL), ePBS and gas repricing, with around 1,000x long-term improvements from ZKEVM and up to 10,000x for certain offchain-aggregated computations, while data capacity is targeted to grow about 10–20x in the short term and roughly 500x in the long term through P2P upgrades, multidimensional gas, Blobs and PeerDAS. Buterin argues that state resources lack a comparable long-term solution and proposes new state forms such as temporary storage, periodic storage and restricted storage, alongside higher-priced traditional state and a dedicated "state creation fee", allowing developers to redesign applications with cheaper state formats while reducing transaction costs for end users. The plan includes this year's Glamsterdam upgrade to enable BAL and ePBS, phased ZKEVM verification starting with selected nodes in 2026 and expanding in 2027, culminating in a design where valid blocks include multiple ZK proofs and most nodes rely on ZKEVM proofs rather than re-executing all transactions.