The following is a guest post and an opinion of Rostyslav Bortman, founder of Ethereum Ukraine.
Even in wartime, Kyiv does not break innovation. Bee Ethkyiv 2025More than 100 hackers have proven the sending of privacy-first Dapps, competing for subsidies and showing what is possible when the world’s most difficult challenges take on web3 grit.
But the real shock waves came from the founders themselves: Vitalik Buterin and Tomasz K. Stańczak, executive director at the Ethereum Foundation, both of which appeared as the online speakers of the event, dropped two Bombshells – 400 TPS on Ethereum L1 this year, and a nearly future.
So what is the following for the protocol? When will 400 rps arrive and what does “Ethereum on your phone” actually mean for developers and users? This is what we learned at Ethkyiv 2025.
Next-Gen UX: Junctions on a telephone
The keynote of Vitalik Buterin at Ethkyiv 2025 cut directly to the core route map of Ethereum. The biggest unveiling:
“Soon you can run a junction on your smartphones and even smartwatches.”
According to Buterin, instead of trusting servers with Terabytes of storage, users will soon be able to perform a full Ethereum node “without heavy sources”. Thanks to the first case of the first of its kind, this will be possible
ZKEVMs make nodes drastically lighter, cut storage by verifying transactions without revealing and importing information about them.
On the L2S of Ethereum, ZKEVMS already reduced the transaction costs by a maximum of 90% and settle in their finality under three seconds. Buterin said that the next step is to bring these improvements to the Ethereum Minet, making blockchain interactions so fast and affordable as traditional web applications.
400 TPS with 3-slot Finality by 2026
At Ethkyiv 2025, Tomasz K. Stańczak, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, spelled exactly what the following is for Ethereum’s Backbone: Real Performance Winins on the Minstet itself.
He revealed that by the end of 2026 Ethereum will move Finality of 3 Slot (3SF)Cutting off the average transaction confirmation time from 15 minutes to just 36 seconds. For users, this will provide the experience of immediate traditional digital payments and at the same time retain all benefits of decentralization.
Stańczak explained the milestones in the short term:
Ethereum L1 will hit 400 transactions per second (TPS) towards the end of 2025.
Block gas limits will reach 100 million this year, with a leap to 60 million per block in a month or two (from the publication date – ed.).
For context: Scales Ethereum L1 is essential because it anchores the entire ecosystem, which means that the security, the settlement and the censorship resistance layer 2 dependent. With a faster Mainstet throughput, users get more certainty that their transactions are rounded to a decentralized, worldwide network -non -bottlenecies by L2 operators.
As Vitalik Buterin summarized:
“The goal is to make Ethereum more private, more censorship resistant and at the same time so easy that even people far from technology use themselves safely every day.”
What does the value of Ethereum and massive adoption really feed?
For me and all Ethereum -followers, some big questions have always remained: what does the value of Ethereum actually support and what could the masses of adoption cause?
When I pressed both Vitalik Buterin and Tomasz Stańczak for answers to Ethkyiv 2025, they each recorded on different but connected drivers.
Tomasz pointed to three non-negotiations: privacy, data protection and transparency. According to him, this is exactly what Enterprise customers and regular users now expect from every blockchain platform.
“Ethereum is a worldwide network and increased acceptance increases the value of the entire ecosystem,” he explained.
The more Ethereum is used for the usefulness of the real world-through companies and by private individuals more demand, and ultimately, value structure.
In the meantime, Vitalik has framed the adoption question on financial use. His position: massive adoption comes when Ethereum becomes the rails for real-world assets, in particular tokenized shares and bonds.
“They are the gateway to mass adoption and the bridge between traditional finances and web3,” he said.
Active with heavyweights such as BlackRock, Deutsche Bank and Coinbase Delivery Ethereum for assets -tokenizationWe are already seeing the lines fade between the $ 117 trillion market of traditional finances and web3 infrastructure.
In short: the real value of Ethereum is not only speculative, but it is now being built at the intersection of security, privacy and practical financial applications. That is where Massa -Adoption starts to look inevitably.
Why Ethkyiv 2025 is important for Ukraine and beyond
Ethkyiv 2025 indeed stand out For his access to global thinkers. Despite all the war -related risks, developers heard insights from the first hand of the most influential builders of Ethereum.
As Stańczak described it:
“Enterprise, Defi, Explorations, AI, research, daily problems, working with people we must understand the direction and give feedback. Much of them.”
His daily routine – URS spends on answering questions from developers – intermediate how the power of Ethereum lies in his people, not just the protocol.
It is crucial that Ethkyiv 2025 was never just another technical event on the calendar. Held against the background of a continuous war, it became a living proof of something bigger: even in the darkest times, the technical community of Ukraine chooses to build, learn and make contact with the global ecosystem.
During the hackathon, the war context was impossible to ignore, but it was not a shadow but a driving force. Performances by Moisei Bondarenko, the violinistic soldier whose music breaks through liberated Ukrainian cities, everyone reminded everyone that innovation and humanity should go hand in hand. That did the tactical medicine session led by Combat Medic Artem Rudy, which brought practical skills and a feeling of shared resilience to the Chamber.
This is what Ethkyiv 2025 broke up: it was a collection of spirit and hearts, proof of the perseverance of community, curiosity and shared values – even in wartime. The world not only looked at the technology, but at the spirit of resilience and solidarity that brought the builders of Ukraine on stage.