Vitalik Releases New Guidelines: How Ethereum Addresses Public Chain Competition and Key Challenges for 2025

Vitalik has released new guidelines, emphasizing adherence to the principles of supply economics in response to fierce competition from other public chains. He calls for the Ethereum ecosystem to strengthen confidence in an infrastructure-centric development path and unique cultural characteristics, and to continue advancing Ethereum's modularity (Sharding) process. Key tasks for 2025 include implementing the Pectra and Fulu Osaka mainnet upgrade projects, and making progress in key areas such as account abstraction, cross-layer interoperability, data market mechanisms, data availability sampling, and statelessness of mainnet blocks.

At the beginning of the new year, participants in the Ethereum ecosystem should be user-oriented and promote the widespread application of Web3. The focus should be on developing high-performance alternative virtual machine chains that support them in attracting users through innovative incentive mechanisms, solidifying Ethereum's position as the global computing and Web3 financial settlement infrastructure.

Vitalik's views reflect his unique cryptocurrency philosophy: he advocates for the abstract ideas of decentralization and infrastructure development but holds reservations about certain types of user groups, such as DeFi speculators, speculative game participants, and cryptocurrency traders.

Recently, certain emerging public chain ecosystems have shown strong growth momentum. At its peak, the 24-hour transaction volume of a single chain even surpassed that of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Its ecological wallet once ranked among the top three in app store downloads, surpassing the mainstream wallets in the Ethereum ecosystem.

What is even more noteworthy is that these emerging public chains have already won the favor of a majority of Generation Z and post-00s developers, many of whom consider Ethereum to be outdated technology.

Faced with these structural challenges from the user level, Vitalik proposed a typical solution: to continue strengthening production and infrastructure construction.

The effectiveness of this strategy remains in doubt.

Although all parties deny the existence of direct competition, the industry generally believes that 2025 will inevitably become a key year for competition between different public chains.

The competition for market share and user mindset among major public chain ecosystems will bring new opportunities for investors.

According to the pricing of the BTC options market on a certain options trading platform, a large W-shaped oscillation structure may appear in 2025. In this environment of relatively tight liquidity and low market risk appetite, certain emerging public chains may surpass Ethereum's market capitalization at some point during the spring or autumn market.

If this event really occurs, it will greatly change the market's psychological expectations, and Ethereum may face significant challenges.