Vitalik Buterin Unveils Ethereum’s Scalability Vision: Why Expanding Bandwidth Matters More Than Speed

Updated

January 9, 2026

Gambar Vitalik Buterin Unveils Ethereum’s Scalability Vision: Why Expanding Bandwidth Matters More Than Speed

Jakarta, Pintu News – Vitalik Buterin has outlined a detailed framework for how Ethereum should evolve over time. He argues that expanding data capacity (bandwidth) is a safer and more sustainable path than reducing transaction delays (latency).

His statement places past and upcoming Ethereum updates in a broader technical and economic context, with an emphasis on decentralization, global accessibility, and the long-term role of the layer-2 network.

Buterin Explains Ethereum’s Roadmap

Buterin explained that Ethereum’s roadmap, including technologies like PeerDAS and zero-knowledge proofs, allows the network to expand significantly without breaking physical boundaries. According to Buterin, increasing bandwidth doesn’t face hard limits as does reducing latency, which is ultimately limited by the speed of light.

Increasing bandwidth is safer than reducing latency

With PeerDAS and ZKPs, we know how to scale, and potentially we can scale thousands of times compared to the status quo. The numbers become far more favorable than before (eg. see analysis here, pre and post-sharding…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 8, 2026

Beyond the physics limitations, latency reduction also brings practical compromises, including the need to support validators located in rural areas or outside of data centers, maintaining censorship resistance and anonymity, and ensuring that running nodes remains economically viable outside of large financial centers.

Buterin warned that even a slight economic disadvantage could lead to geographic concentration of validators. If staking from a particular location consistently yields lower returns, participation will tend to migrate to higher-profit regions, ultimately weakening the principle of decentralization.

Therefore, Ethereum’s design must be able to pass what he calls the “walkaway test”, where the network must remain decentralized without the need for constant social or organizational intervention.

Realistic Latency Improvement and Dependency on Layer-2

While rejecting the idea of extreme latency reduction, Buterin acknowledges that moderate improvements are still possible. Peer-to-peer optimizations such as erasure coding and architectural changes that reduce the number of nodes involved in each slot can speed up message dissemination times.

Overall, these changes have the potential to reduce block generation time to around two to four seconds, which is a three to six-fold improvement over the current state.

However, he emphasized that Ethereum was not designed to be a real-time system for applications that require ultra-fast speeds. Instead, it serves as a global coordination layer, or “heartbeat,” for economic and social activity.

Applications that require faster response will continue to rely on layer-2 networks and off-chain components, even as the base layer scales up.

Ethereum Comparison with BitTorrent and Linux

To illustrate his vision, Buterin compared Ethereum to BitTorrent and Linux. Like BitTorrent, Ethereum aims to combine decentralization with large-scale participation, allowing for efficient distribution without centralized control.

He noted that BitTorrent has long been used for legitimate purposes, such as software distribution, corporate infrastructure updates, public data releases, and scientific archives.

One metaphor for Ethereum is BitTorrent, and how that p2p network combines decentralization and mass scale. Ethereum's goal is to do the same thing but with consensus.

Another metaphor for Ethereum is Linux.

* Linux is free and open source software, and does not compromise on…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 8, 2026

The analogy with Linux highlights Ethereum’s open-source foundation and its wide adoption. Linux is used by governments, enterprises, and billions of users, while still supporting a very specific and minimalist distribution.

According to Buterin, Ethereum’s base layer should also remain a neutral and open platform for various use cases such as finance, identity, and governance. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem is designed to handle both highly localized and global-scale needs.

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