American venture capitalist and entrepreneur Fred Wilson said on Monday that he believes crypto will become more user-friendly by 2026. He argued that this year’s market breakthrough will only come from making blockchains invincible to their end users.
Wilson’s prediction for the crypto market is part of a larger series of predictions for 2026. His prediction also aligns with his long-held vision: Blockchain’s promise hinges on ease of use, not technical horsepower.
Wilson advocates a user-friendly blockchain interface
Wilson argued that more user-friendly interfaces can help mask the complexity of blockchain. He believes that these interfaces will facilitate the way users use, issue, trade and send tokens across blockchains.
The American businessman is the founder of Union Square Ventures (USV), the American company that early gambled on Twitter, Tumblr and Etsy. He was also an early investor in Ethereum and Filecoin and remains a renowned voice in long-term discussions about how blockchain can achieve mainstream adoption.
Wilson has previously said that blockchain is the next big thing after social and mobile, and has been more vocal about the crypto industry’s short-sighted tendencies. The entrepreneur has also resisted the hype culture and symbolic speculation in the sector.
He warned that short-term greed threatens the industry’s long-term credibility. The venture capitalist highlighted features like decentralized identity, peer-to-peer financing, and open protocols that users can build on.
Wilson named in a 2018 blog post that one of the downsides of technology is that there are no financial incentives to create and maintain open protocols. He also argued that open protocols cannot be easily monetized through traditional means.
Vitalik Buterin solves Ethereum’s long-standing trilemma
Now that ZKEVMs are in alpha (production quality performance, remaining work is security) and PeerDAS is live on the mainnet, it’s time to talk more about what this combination means for Ethereum.
These are not small improvements; they’re turning Ethereum into a…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 3, 2026
Wilson’s call for better user-friendly blockchains by 2026 comes as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Monday he has solved the blockchain’s long-standing trilemma. He revealed that recent upgrades to the network have transformed Ethereum into a more powerful, decentralized network that can achieve security, decentralization and scalability.
“Now Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVMs (expect small parts of the network to use it in 2026), we get: decentralized, consensus and high bandwidth.”
–Vitalik ButerineCo-founder of Ethereum.
Buterin referred to Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling and Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines. He claimed that ZKEVMs reaching alpha (production quality performance, remaining work is security) and PeerDAS being live on the mainnet raise a question about what the combination means for Ethereum.
The Ethereum co-founder stated that the combinations are not new improvements, but rather a shift in ETH towards a more powerful network. He acknowledged that the trilemma has been solved with live running code, but not on paper. The crypto magnate revealed that one half (data availability sampling) is on the mainnet, while the other half (ZK-EVMs) is production quality.
Buterin predicts that there will be large, non-ZKEVM-dependent increases in gas limits in 2026, driven by BALs and ePBS. He also believes that this year will be the first time there will be the ability to use ZKEVM mode.
The Ethereum co-founder predicts even more changes by 2028, including gas repricing, state structure adjustments, and storing execution payload in blobs, among other adjustments to ensure security at higher gas limits. From 2027 to 2030, he sees a further increase in gas limits as ZKEVM becomes the primary block validator on ETH.
Buterin also called for a distributed block building on Ethereum, where the entire block is never one piece. He said the initiative won’t be needed for a long time, but it is worth it for the company.
To achieve this, he wants the authority on block construction to be as divided as possible. Buterin argued that this can be done both within the protocol and outside the protocol with distributed hardware marketplaces. He hopes this will reduce the risk of centralized interference with real-time transaction inclusion.