Ethereum has recently been making some moves. In a recent interview, founder Vitalik Buterin revealed that "Ethereum's subsequent evolution will bring unexpected changes," which has sparked a lot of speculation in the community.

This low-profile technical leader suddenly making a public statement usually indicates that an important milestone is approaching. Looking back at previous key moments: in 2015, when the "world computer" vision was announced, few believed in it, but it later increased in value by over a thousand times; before the 2021 Merge upgrade, positive signals were released, and ETH surged from $2,000 to $4,800. Now, we are seeing a similar signal again.

Clues can be seen from on-chain data. After the Merge, Ethereum's network energy consumption dropped by 99.9%—this environmental advantage is highly attractive to institutions. Daily active users on the chain remain stable above 500,000, and the DeFi ecosystem's total value locked has returned to around $40 billion. More notably, 26 million ETH have been staked, accounting for about 20% of circulating supply—whales and large institutions are betting on Ethereum's long-term prospects with real actions.

What might V神 be planning? Several directions are particularly focused on. The first is the Danksharding upgrade aimed at performance improvements, expected to increase transaction throughput by 100 times and bring gas fees close to zero. The testnet has already run related parameters, capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second—this could truly solve issues like lagging chain games and high transaction costs that have troubled users.

And there's more to come...