The number sounds almost too big to take seriously. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted a detailed technical roadmap on February 27 outlining how the network could handle up to 1,000 times its current transaction capacity — without pricing out the smaller node operators who keep the system decentralized.
The document, which Buterin informally calls the “Strawmap,” breaks the work into three problem areas: execution, data, and state.
Near-Term Upgrades Come First
The closest item on the list is an upcoming protocol upgrade called “Glamsterdam.” According to reports, one of its key changes introduces block-level access lists — a technical adjustment that allows different parts of a block to be processed simultaneously rather than one after another.
Reports also say the upgrade improves how efficiently each 12-second block slot is used, making it safer to pack more transactions into every block without destabilizing the network.
Now, scaling.
There are two buckets here: short-term and long-term.
Short term scaling I’ve written about elsewhere. Basically:
* Block level access lists (coming in Glamsterdam) allow blocks to be verified in parallel.
* ePBS (coming in Glamsterdam) has many features, of…— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 27, 2026
Buterin acknowledged that these changes, combined with better client software, might be enough to reach a stable state on their own. If real usage stays low, he suggested the full 1,000x push could be shelved in favor of other priorities entirely.
Zero-Knowledge Proofs Take Center Stage In Longer Plans
The more ambitious part of the roadmap involves zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines, or ZK-EVMs. Rather than requiring every validator to re-run every transaction to confirm it is legitimate, ZK-EVMs allow validators to check cryptographic proofs instead — a far lighter task.
According to reports, Buterin’s timeline calls for a small group of validators to begin using this method as early as 2026, with broader adoption potentially following in 2027. If that plays out, the network’s capacity ceiling could be raised significantly without forcing node operators to invest in more powerful hardware.
State Growth Gets Its Own Fix
Reports say Buterin flagged state growth as a separate and underappreciated problem. Deploying a large smart contract adds data that every Ethereum node must store permanently — and that accumulated storage gradually raises the cost of running a node at all.
His proposed fix tracks state creation gas independently, so it does not count against the regular transaction gas cap. Large contracts could still be deployed, but their pricing would reflect the real long-term storage cost.
The 1,000x figure is a long-term ceiling, not a promise for next year. Each phase of the plan depends on the one before it working as intended.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
