Ethereum has long stood at the forefront of the crypto ecosystem, pioneering smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and decentralized finance (DeFi). Its vibrant community of researchers and engineers continues to push boundaries in advanced areas like zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and maximum extractable value (MEV). Since its inception, Ethereum has demonstrated an impressive capacity for innovation—its original protocol launched in under two years, a pace that inspired many developers to choose it as their primary platform.
Today, we believe Ethereum can—and should—move even faster. While preserving its core values of decentralization and security, there are numerous high-impact protocol improvements that could be accelerated without compromise. Speeding up development isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential for maintaining Ethereum’s leadership in a competitive landscape.
Why Faster Iteration Benefits Everyone
There’s ongoing debate within the community about Ethereum’s long-term vision: Should it prioritize Layer 1 (L1) scalability or Layer 2 (L2) innovation? Should it focus on financial use cases or broader applications? While these discussions are valuable, they often distract from a more fundamental truth—faster iteration expands what’s possible.
Rather than getting stuck in ideological trade-offs early on, Ethereum should focus on pushing the technical frontier. Rapid development allows the network to explore multiple paths in parallel. Instead of asking "Should we do X or Y first?", a faster-moving Ethereum can answer: "Why not both?"
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The resources are already there—brilliant researchers, passionate engineers, and a global community committed to building the future. What’s needed now is empowerment: giving teams the autonomy and support to work in parallel, reduce bottlenecks, and deliver results faster.
How Ethereum Can Speed Up Development
Historically, Ethereum has rolled out one major protocol upgrade per year. That pace was acceptable in earlier stages—but today, it's insufficient. To remain competitive and responsive, Ethereum must evolve more rapidly.
A key obstacle is mindset. Some believe Ethereum’s core protocol should begin "ossifying"—slowing down changes to preserve decentralization. We disagree. Protocol ossification carries significant risks, including:
- Falling behind more agile blockchain platforms
- Losing developers and users to centralized alternatives
- Weakening on-chain governance by freezing critical social coordination mechanisms
Instead of slowing down, Ethereum should double down on evolution. Core development is not just technical—it's a form of decentralized governance where validators, researchers, and clients collaborate to shape the network’s future. Freezing this process undermines Ethereum’s adaptability.
To accelerate progress, we propose several key improvements:
1. Client Teams Should Have Advisory Power, Not Veto Power
Client diversity strengthens resilience—but it shouldn’t come at the cost of speed. Currently, upgrades require consensus across all client teams, creating a "N-of-N" bottleneck where the slowest team dictates the pace.
We advocate shifting to a model where client teams provide input and testing assurance—but do not have unilateral veto power over upgrades. Our own Reth client is designed with this principle in mind: we commit to never being a bottleneck on Ethereum’s roadmap.
2. Optimize the AllCoreDevs Process
The AllCoreDevs calls are central to Ethereum’s coordination. As Tim Beiko recently suggested, there’s room for improvement in how decisions are made and documented. Community feedback—such as retrospectives on past upgrades like Pectra—can help refine this process into something more efficient, transparent, and scalable.
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3. Invest Heavily in DevOps and Testing Infrastructure
Frequent, reliable upgrades require robust automation, continuous integration, and comprehensive testnets. By allocating more resources to DevOps, Ethereum can safely deploy complex changes more often—without compromising stability.
Low-Hanging Fruit: High-Impact Improvements Within Reach
Many valuable upgrades remain unexplored simply because the perceived pace of change is too slow. Teams assume only a few changes can happen per year, leading to self-imposed limits. This mindset must shift.
Here are several impactful areas ripe for acceleration:
Scalability and L2 Security
Rollups rely on predictable roadmaps to plan capacity and user growth. Post-EIP-4844 enhancements—such as PeerDAS or Blob-Parameter-Only (BPO) hard forks—deserve greater investment to ensure long-term data availability and cost efficiency.
Additionally, proposals like Native Rollups could allow rollups to inherit L1-level security and censorship resistance directly through protocol-level support—an elegant solution that aligns incentives across layers.
Scaling L1 Without Increasing Node Burden
Scaling doesn’t always mean bigger blocks. Smart optimizations can increase throughput while keeping node operation accessible:
- Opcode re-pricing based on actual computational cost (e.g., disk I/O) improves efficiency without raising gas limits
- Research into statelessness and history expiry (EIP-4444) enables lighter nodes and faster sync times
- Analyzing historical state growth helps determine safe thresholds for increasing gas limits—a topic actively explored in recent Paradigm research
Smarter Accounts, Better UX
User experience remains a barrier to mainstream adoption. While EIP-7702 begins bridging the gap between externally owned accounts (EOAs) and smart contract wallets (account abstraction), further improvements are possible:
- Native support for batch transactions and gas sponsorship
- Recovery mechanisms that reduce reliance on private keys
- Programmable permissions and spending limits
These features can make wallets more secure, intuitive, and accessible—without sacrificing decentralization.
How We’re Contributing to Faster Progress
As researchers and builders at Paradigm, we’re actively contributing to Ethereum’s acceleration through:
- Writing and analyzing EIPs like EIP-7862, which offer non-controversial yet impactful upgrades
- Conducting deep dives into state and history growth to inform safer gas limit increases
- Building Reth, a production-ready Ethereum client designed for speed and extensibility
Reth isn’t just a node—it’s an EVM-core SDK that empowers researchers to prototype new ideas quickly. We invite the broader community to experiment with us, testing innovations in performance, censorship resistance, and future-proofing.
We also support foundational tooling such as Foundry, Alloy, Solar, Revm, Wagmi, and Viem—ensuring protocol improvements translate smoothly into real-world applications.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Doesn’t faster development increase the risk of bugs or chain splits?
A: Not necessarily. With better testing infrastructure, automated CI/CD pipelines, and formal verification, rapid iteration can be safer than infrequent, high-stakes upgrades.
Q: Won’t reducing client veto power harm decentralization?
A: No—diversity of clients remains critical. The goal isn’t to eliminate diversity but to prevent any single team from unilaterally blocking progress. Consensus should be built through collaboration, not coercion.
Q: Is account abstraction ready for prime time?
A: Yes. Wallets like Argent and Safe already use it successfully. With EIP-7702 and future upgrades, AA can become seamless for all users.
Q: Can Ethereum scale without compromising security?
A: Absolutely. Techniques like data sharding (via danksharding), state expiry, and peer-to-peer data availability (e.g., PeerDAS) enable scaling while preserving trust-minimization.
Q: What role does MEV play in development speed?
A: MEV isn’t just a challenge—it’s a driver of innovation. Solutions like proposer-builder separation (PBS) and MEV smoothing create incentives for uptime and fairness, indirectly supporting faster upgrades.
Q: How can individuals contribute to faster iteration?
A: Join AllCoreDevs discussions, contribute to testnets, audit EIPs, or build tooling. Every contribution helps strengthen the ecosystem.
Final Thoughts: Choose Speed, Unlock Potential
Choosing to iterate faster is one of the most consequential decisions the Ethereum community can make. It opens doors to innovation, strengthens resilience, and ensures Ethereum remains the leading platform for trustless computation.
By embracing velocity—not recklessness—we can build a truly global, open financial system that serves everyone. The tools are ready. The talent is here. Now is the time to accelerate.
Keywords: Ethereum scalability, faster blockchain iteration, L2 security, account abstraction, EIP improvements, DevOps for blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs