Vitalik Releases New Direction for Ethereum Development, Facing Challenges from Solana

Vitalik recently released guidance on the future development of Ethereum. He emphasized the need to adhere to a supply-side economics approach while addressing competitive pressures from other public chains. The Ethereum ecosystem needs to enhance confidence in a development path centered on infrastructure and continue to advance the modular (sharding) process.

In 2025, Ethereum plans to implement two important mainnet upgrades: Pectra and Fulu Osaka. These upgrades will achieve breakthroughs in key areas such as account abstraction, cross-layer interoperability, data market mechanisms, data availability sampling, and statelessness of mainnet blocks.

In the new year, the Ethereum ecosystem will focus on user experience and promote broader blockchain applications. Key areas include developing high-performance alternative virtual machine chains, supporting the attraction of users through various incentive mechanisms, and consolidating Ethereum's position as the global computing and financial settlement infrastructure.

However, Vitalik's philosophy has also sparked some controversy. Some argue that he is too focused on abstract concepts of decentralization and infrastructure development, while neglecting the actual needs of users, such as the interests of decentralized finance enthusiasts, cryptocurrency traders, and other groups.

At the same time, a certain public chain ecosystem representing another technological route is rapidly developing. At its peak, the daily transaction volume of this chain even exceeded that of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Its ecosystem wallet once surpassed the mainstream wallets of the Ethereum ecosystem in terms of downloads in the app store.

It is worth noting that this emerging public chain has already attracted the attention of a large number of young users and developers. Many young people even begin to see Ethereum as outdated technology.

Faced with these challenges from the user level, Vitalik chose to continue focusing on infrastructure development. This decision has sparked some doubts, with some believing that it may not effectively address the current market competition.

Although both parties deny direct competition, it is widely believed in the industry that 2025 will be a pivotal year for the blockchain sector. Competition between different technological routes may bring new investment opportunities to the market.

According to data from a certain options trading platform, there may be significant fluctuations in 2025. In this market environment of tight liquidity and low risk appetite, the market capitalization rankings of public chains may undergo significant changes. Once this change occurs, it will greatly alter the market landscape and may pose major challenges for Ethereum.