scalability

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, delivered a keynote speech at the 12th Global Blockchain Summit, stating that the blockchain was initially a primary tool. Although it has characteristics such as openness, neutrality, and security, it is not scalable and is completely transparent, lacking privacy protection mechanisms.Subsequently, privacy transactions and scalable verification brought by zero-knowledge proofs have changed this situation and have been transformed from planning into actual EIPs, included in the Ethereum roadmap. Technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption are also beginning to be applied, and indistinguishable obfuscation may also be applied on-chain in the future. Beyond privacy, the parallel construction and proof of blocks can make extreme scalability possible, and industry thinking has shifted from digital assets to digital assets plus information, from purely on-chain to user-end, transaction memory pools, a complete pipeline on-chain, and from who can send what to who can see what.Currently, blockchain has gradually evolved from a simple ledger to a cryptography-based secure computing network. With the development of AI, providing cryptographic rules to AI for automated formal verification can significantly enhance verification efficiency, allowing the chain to carry more possibilities.

According to CoinDesk, the Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade has continued to confirm blocks after adopting new block construction rules this week, passing key tests and paving the way for its planned launch on the Sepolia public testnet on October 6. The Nethermind client subsequently completed performance tests involving one of the biggest changes in Glamsterdam, with all 2,302 tests passing, processing 57.07 billion gas in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, averaging about 2.9 billion gas per second.The benchmark measures the speed of the Nethermind execution software rather than the entire network, testing block-level access lists. This mechanism informs Ethereum nodes in advance about which accounts and storage data will be used in the block, allowing nodes to fetch data and check unrelated transactions simultaneously, whereas the current Ethereum mostly processes related work sequentially, limiting the amount of activity each block can accommodate. About an hour after the testnet launch, Glamsterdam raised the block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million, freeing up space for more payments, token swaps, and other activities per block.The 200 million gas limit allows Ethereum to absorb more activity before users start bidding for block space, thereby alleviating fee spikes during transaction surges or when popular tokens are launched. Larger blocks are also harder to verify, which may make it difficult for small-scale operators to keep up. Glamsterdam aims to gain additional capacity without excessively increasing chain operating costs. This upgrade also extends the block data propagation time from about 2 seconds to 9 seconds and plans to incorporate the handover and payment of block construction and verification into Ethereum's own rules, reducing reliance on external relay services.

The Supernova upgrade of MultiversX decouples consensus from execution, allowing the network to reach consensus on blocks before processing transactions. Before the upgrade, block production followed a sequential model: proposers selected transactions, executed them locally, and submitted blocks containing the results, while validators had to re-execute the same transactions before voting, making execution part of the consensus critical path. Supernova changes this order: proposers select transactions and directly propose blocks without prior execution; validators can immediately vote once they confirm the proposal complies with protocol rules, while execution occurs asynchronously in the background, with execution results typically referenced and notarized in the next block header, lagging consensus by about one block (approximately 600 milliseconds).To address the validity verification issues brought by decoupling, Supernova introduces a virtual memory pool state that tracks pending nonces, expected balance consumption, and transactions that have been proposed but whose execution results have not yet reached consensus, providing proposers with a forward-looking account view. Meanwhile, the Execution-Result Inclusion Estimator (EIE) limits the number of execution results that can be referenced in a block based on the capacity that the minimum specification node can safely handle; an automatic backpressure mechanism reduces block capacity when execution lags. Supernova has been producing 600-millisecond blocks on the testnet and devnet since August 20, with the mainnet expected to activate on September 10, 2026.

To implement the decision-making deployment of the "14th Five-Year Plan" regarding the "steady development of digital renminbi" and to further enhance the inclusiveness of digital renminbi services, continuously responding to the public's demand for safe, convenient, and efficient digital renminbi services, the People's Bank of China has added Ping An Bank, Hengfeng Bank, Bohai Bank, Shanghai Bank, Hangzhou Bank, Huishang Bank, Changsha Bank, and Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank as operational institutions for bank-related digital renminbi services, and has connected to the central bank's digital renminbi system.The newly added institutions will commence digital renminbi operations after completing business and technical preparations. Currently, the number of operational institutions for digital renminbi services has expanded to 30. In the next step, the People's Bank of China will orderly promote the expansion of operational institutions according to market-oriented and rule-of-law principles, further stimulating the enthusiasm and creativity of market entities, and building an open, inclusive, and fair competitive environment for the development of digital renminbi.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform, stating that the Bitcoin community deserves recognition for promoting the development of related technological concepts, including Utreexo and other UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) state optimization solutions. The scaling route currently being explored by Ethereum is integrating the advantages of different blockchain state models in practice.Vitalik Buterin pointed out that Ethereum hopes to simultaneously leverage the advantages of UTXO model states, dynamic states, and solutions between the two, enabling the vast majority of network activities to achieve "hyperscale" while not sacrificing decentralization, ease of node operation, and censorship resistance.Vitalik Buterin stated that future Ethereum scaling is not simply about copying a certain architecture, but rather aims to enhance throughput while maintaining the openness and security of the network by combining different design philosophies. Among them, Utreexo is a state compression solution proposed by the Bitcoin ecosystem, which reduces the storage burden on nodes by introducing accumulator technology, making full node operation more lightweight, and is considered beneficial for enhancing Bitcoin's long-term scalability.

Vitalik Buterin stated that he has compared the 2023 Ethereum roadmap with the current Strawmap, and while there is still a high degree of overlap in the overall direction, some priorities and technical paths have been clearly adjusted. This includes elevating the priority of quantum security, downplaying VDF and certain EVM improvements, and replacing old designs with unified binary trees, PBT, new state types, and other solutions.He pointed out that the most significant change in the current Strawmap is the emergence of several new topics not included in the 2023 roadmap, reflecting a shift in the focus of Ethereum's development. These new focal points include: stronger native privacy support, aggressive scaling in a post-quantum context, streamlined specifications for formal verification, Blob and Gas futures, native Rollup, and a more open design space around the future form of EVM.Vitalik also emphasized that Ethereum's scaling approach is shifting from "broadly scaling all activities" to "designing more easily scalable dedicated mechanisms for specific high-load scenarios," and views STARK proofs and AI-accelerated formal verification as important foundations for the protocol's future. Overall, this update indicates that the Ethereum roadmap is evolving towards quantum security, privacy-first, censorship resistance, high performance, and more simplified protocol design.

Zcash has launched a new full node, Zakura, maintained by a team independent of the Zcash Foundation. It is released as a trimmed version of Zebra for fast synchronization and is compatible with the old zcashd client. This client will reach the end of its lifecycle. Zakura is one of the components of Zcash's scalability efforts, working alongside Project Tachyon and private information retrieval research, aiming to increase network throughput to Visa and Mastercard levels by reducing verification data and eliminating wallet performance bottlenecks.Zakura also supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) upgrade, which will be activated on July 28. This upgrade introduces a turnstile mechanism to limit withdrawals from the Orchard shielded pool and control the potential generation of counterfeit ZEC due to long-term soundness bugs.

According to CoinDesk, Cardano's core development company Input Output submitted nine funding proposals for the 2026 community treasury, totaling $46.8 million, a significant reduction of about 52% from last year's $97.5 million, marking the first step towards gradually reducing reliance on community funds.The nine proposals focus on two main directions: first, the consensus upgrade plan Leios, which is expected to increase Cardano's transaction processing capacity by 10 to 65 times, aiming to exceed 1,000 transactions per second, with testing planned for June and full launch by the end of the year; second, the Bitcoin DeFi system Pogun, which allows Bitcoin holders to lend and earn through Cardano without having to trust centralized institutions, with lending features expected to be publicly released in the second quarter.This voting involves about 1,000 elected representatives (DReps), with the voting deadline set for May 24. The results will test whether the Cardano community views Input Output as a regular funding applicant.Meanwhile, the new stablecoin USDCx in the Cardano ecosystem has reached a circulation of 14.6 million coins within weeks of its launch, and the total locked assets on the network have increased from $137.5 million to $142.7 million.

At the "Crypto 2026: From Cryptocurrency to Smart Economy" themed forum held in Hong Kong, guests including KiteAI's Asia Pacific head Laughing, Sentient's Asia Pacific head Anita, Brevis content director Nic Tang, Mentis product head Jerry, and Predict.fun's Asia Pacific BD head Ah Huang Ricardo engaged in a roundtable discussion on the theme "AI × Crypto --- The Foundation of the Next Generation Digital Economy."Regarding whether the outbreak of open-source AI Agents (such as "raising lobsters") is a short-term sentiment or a long-term trend, Laughing believes this marks a paradigm shift of AI from "conversational" to "executive," signaling the beginning of a long-term trend. However, Agents lack a physical identity, making it difficult for merchants to trust their trading behavior, and issues of data leakage and uncontrollability remain obstacles that must be overcome for scaling. Jerry pointed out, based on his own usage experience, that current Agents face security risks such as memory fuzziness, token consumption in dead loops, and accidental file deletion. Although newly emerged Agents have improvements, they still have shortcomings. Ah Huang Ricardo stated that behind the short-term sentiment is real user demand, but truly reproducible profitable trading Agents are still very rare, and there is a long way to go.Addressing core bottlenecks such as trust, security, and verifiability, Nic Tang emphasized that the current execution process of Agents is like a black box, where users cannot verify whether their decisions are executed as promised. Zero-knowledge proof technology can mathematically prove the source of an Agent's output and compliance with behavior, while not exposing privacy. Anita added that Sentient is committed to building an open and collaborative AI agent network, promoting the deep integration of AI and blockchain in identity, data, and incentive layers, providing foundational support for the next generation digital economy.Regarding the application scenarios that are likely to scale first, the guests generally believe that the programming field is relatively mature, and Agents in prediction markets perform better than humans in specific tracks due to their rationality and lack of emotions. In the short term, they are optimistic about API Marketplace and cross-platform consumer shopping Agents, while in the medium term, they are optimistic about content creation AI (such as AI influencers). Agent-to-Agent interaction and the Agent/Skill Marketplace are seen as important future trends.

The Zcash core development team Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) founder Josh Swihart released the latest progress on Zcash, proposing a strategic direction centered on "post-quantum security, scalability, and user experience," and using the Artemis II lunar mission as a metaphor to emphasize achieving seemingly impossible goals through technological breakthroughs. The ZODL team stated that Zcash is entering the "Zcash IV" phase, which will build infrastructure similar to a "lunar base" to support the protocol and application security scaling to billions of users, while promoting the vision of privacy transactions without large-scale financial surveillance.On the product and technology front, ZODL continues to iterate, with its 3.3.x version now launched on iOS and Android, adding hardware wallet connection management, SDK upgrades, and multiple experience optimizations, while advancing key developments such as Keystone wallet functionality and address system upgrades (ZIP 316, UIVK/UFVK). Meanwhile, the Zcash core team has fixed multiple system issues and is advancing the development of the Zallet alpha version, while strengthening unified address standards and wallet interaction experiences, laying the groundwork for future scalability and performance improvements.In addition, ZODL disclosed that its application data continues to grow and participated in a stablecoin privacy summit to strengthen industry collaboration. However, due to upgrades in regulation and network restrictions, ZODL has temporarily removed its app from the Russian app store. The team emphasized that privacy is not an option but a fundamental need in the digital age, and will continue to accelerate delivery pace to promote the popularization of ZEC and ecological development in the future.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently released the Ethereum scalability roadmap, which is divided into short-term and long-term strategies. In the short term, the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade will introduce block-level access lists for parallel validation, while optimizing block processing efficiency through ePBS and launching an innovative multi-dimensional Gas model that separates "state creation" from "execution" costs.In the long-term plan, Ethereum will handle data at rates of up to 8 MB/second using PeerDAS technology and plans to gradually introduce ZK-EVM technology starting in 2026, expanding its application scope by 2027, ultimately achieving a highly scalable blockchain network validated through multiple proof systems. This move aims to enhance Ethereum's transaction processing capacity while maintaining decentralization and security.

The founder of Bitcoin Strategy, Michael Saylor, posted on the X platform stating that during bank holidays, Bitcoin can still transfer any amount to any location in the world within minutes, with transaction fees of about $0.44 (approximately 1 sat/vB).During the previous "Blocksize Wars" period, there were widespread concerns in the market that Bitcoin would face a scalability crisis. However, more than a decade later, Bitcoin's on-chain transaction fees remain low, and network bandwidth resources are abundant. This outcome once again demonstrates that market mechanisms and technological innovations are often more effective in addressing systemic challenges than administrative emergency interventions.