Vitalik: Ethereum scaling will be implemented in two phases—short-term and long-term—and will introduce multi-dimensional Gas to prevent state bloat

On February 28, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published a post discussing Ethereum’s roadmap for scaling, stating that scaling should be divided into short-term and long-term phases. The short-term scaling mainly relies on the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which implements parallel validation through block-level access lists, extends block validation time windows with the ePBS mechanism, and re-prices Gas to measure actual operation time. It also introduces multi-dimensional Gas to differentiate resource consumption and prevent state bloat. During the Glamsterdam upgrade, “state creation costs” are separated, allowing state creation Gas to be excluded from the normal Gas limit, supporting larger contract creation. The EVM will maintain compatibility through a “reservoir” mechanism, ensuring sub-calls and Gas operations continue to function properly. In the future, multi-dimensional Gas pricing will be gradually adopted to achieve long-term economic sustainability while maintaining flexibility. Long-term scaling focuses on ZK-EVM and blobs. Blobs aim to reach 8MB/s data availability through iterative PeerDAS, enabling block data to be directly stored in blobs for verification without full download. ZK-EVM will be rolled out in phases, initially allowing 5% network usage in 2026, expanding to a larger proportion in 2027, and ultimately transitioning to a “3-of-5” multi-proof system, enabling nodes to verify without re-execution, ensuring security and extremely high Gas limits.