What People Need From Ethereum | ETHLabs | Common S3nse - 2026

Hello everyone. I'll just start my conversation. Thank you for coming. Thank you for going through Gene Schalk for this report. Let me begin.

So, I'm here to begin. So, I'm here to talk about E Labs and what we see people want to see in Ethereum. Let me start with a little introduction to what E Labs is. So, E Labs E Labs is. So, E Labs is a new non-profit organization that helps Ethereum and E grow.

We founded it about 10 weeks ago, and there were five of us— were five of us— former members of the Ethereum Foundation research group. I also worked there for four years. We have developed here the basic market structure for Ethereum and parts of the consensus mechanism. I think many of us have realized that while Ethereum's core infrastructure is extremely important, it doesn't seem to be what's holding Ethereum back right now holding Ethereum back right now . This is not what is preventing the widespread adoption of Ethereum.

That's why we founded E Labs , whose goal is , whose goal is to provide what the ecosystem urgently needs to further grow adoption. This is a fairly broad task, and there are only nine of us right now. So, we started with five, grew to nine, and we do it mostly through technical means. This means that we will be implementing improvements to the core Ethereum protocol. We will improve the basic infrastructure, and also communicate this to the very people this infrastructure is meant to serve.

More on that in a moment. So why did we start E Labs? Well, Ethereum is a huge ecosystem now huge ecosystem now , isn't it? It has over a million developers all time. The value of the E token itself is between $300 billion and $500 billion, and the TVL in Ethereum is incredibly large.

It is actually too large to be serviced by a single ecosystem curator ecosystem curator , which was previously the Ethereum Foundation. Add to this the narrowing of the Ethereum Foundation's scope after the mandate update, which was a bit of a strategic turn for them. It became obvious to us that we needed another ecosystem curator. Which will help Ethereum in this new era of implementation. We share roughly the same values ​​as the Ethereum Foundation, so don't expect any drastic changes from us that you have n't seen before.

We, of course, value censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. But we have a different culture. And this different culture actually leads to very different technical results. So we build different technologies, even though we are all working on the same Ethereum. This may sound contradictory: how can we have different results if we are working on the same technology?

But in fact, so far everything is going quite well and very harmoniously. The Ethereum Foundation is working on very long and large-scale ambitious projects, such as ZK EVM, post-quantum security post-quantum security , as well as faster projects. But, in general, the time frames vary and the results are quite different. And what will ultimately be released is not decided by the Ethereum Foundation anyway. This is always decided by a group of core developers who determine which elements will be implemented in the next Ethereum hard fork .

So we offer our elements to this group, and the Ethereum Foundation does something similar. So, what exactly are we hearing about Ethereum releasing Ethereum releasing ? Well, for context, I was here last year and I argued that we should scale Ethereum more. Of course, Ethereum scaling Ethereum scaling is nothing new. People have been talking about this for ages, but the approach has been very different.

We've talked about this before through ambitious projects where we go from a very small scale to a huge one at a time, for example, through the ZK EVM, which has certain technical properties that allow it to scale extremely strongly. Some of what we did back when we were at the Ethereum Foundation started with iterative scaling improvements. So instead of trying to go from zero to one, we tried to go from zero to 0.1 go from zero to 0.1 , 0.

2 , and so on. Ethereum had a gas capacity of 13 million for a very long time. And recently it scaled to 60 million. It scales to 200 million by the end of the year. And after that, it will be able to scale iteratively further.

How do these iterative improvements work? Everything is happening exactly as you expect. There are small inefficiencies in the system that are constantly being addressed constantly being addressed . Some of them are a bit larger, and they are resolved through hard forks. And some of them are really quite small and can be solved even within a year.

So, this is how we scale iteratively. Another reason we are collecting so much user feedback on what Ethereum should release is that the elements for the next fork are being selected right now. So the next fork is called Hedera, and it will be introduced sometime in 2027. And today, the core developers are deciding which elements should be included in this fork. So, for example, what should we prioritize: faster slots, greater scalability, or user experience?

All of these things are certainly important, but developers' time is a limited resource . So, what does Ethereum look like now? A lot has happened, we started with basically just one Ethereum Foundation, and it has grown significantly since then . Most of this growth has occurred over the past 10-11 years, but there have been some recent changes. Here in this diagram that Tim showed from Protocol Guild, you can see a rough outline.

You can see the Ethereum Foundation here. It's still pretty big. He does a lot of the core development work, but there are a lot of other organizations contributing, and what I think is really cool is that the core development of Ethereum is really very decentralized. It's extremely difficult to cover, there are a multitude of organizations contributing in the public good format, advocating for what they believe is important for the next four years. You see, EF Labs is a small speck here, we only do our research and development, and ACDH stands for "all major developers in education."

My personal interesting fact about the launch of EF Labs is that since our departure from the Ethereum Foundation, its former members have created three new organizations. Our focus is on technologies that are immediately needed to help Ethereum grow and be adopted. There is a new organization, Ethereum Institutional, which helps institutions and enterprises get on board with Ethereum, primarily through business development, as well as E-Systems, which helps deploy privacy engineering solutions. The most interesting thing is that two of these organizations two of these organizations , EF Labs and Ethereum Institutional, are funded solely by donations. I think this sometimes gets overlooked, but it's actually extremely interesting.

Very few other ecosystems are able to fund two large units of core development solely through donations without any additional strings attached. Most other labs you see in other ecosystems are venture capital companies that ultimately have to make a profit for their shareholders. And therefore they will not be able to do exclusively what is best for their ecosystem. So, what really makes a culture different? What exactly are we trying to bring to Ethereum?

Well, one part of it is that we want to be more iteration-oriented. And this is something I also mentioned in the context of scaling. We are not trying to go from zero to a hundred right away. We try to take small steps to reach our goal. One of the issues we are promoting here we are promoting here is, for example, faster slots.

The slot time in Ethereum has been 12 seconds for a long time. And it actually turns out to be quite difficult to change this, even from 12 to 11. This is because slot time is implicitly built into the assumptions of the codebases throughout Ethereum, as well as in the applications built on top of it. Therefore, we first try to make this time parametric, then gradually reduce it and speed up Ethereum. We also focus on results above all else .

This may seem obvious, but sometimes development is overly focused on mechanisms. This happens because you've been working on the development for a very long time, right? It's hard to start with a result because you create new primitives that others then build on. We try to put the result first, and this is possible thanks to an iterative approach iterative approach . So, we are reducing the timeframes we focus on in development.

We, for example, are thinking about how to help L2 app developers raise capital , instead of just thinking about the efficiency of capital movement between L2. These are minor differences in culture, but they lead to different technical results. The last thing I spend the most time on is what we call “ we call “ from demand to result.” We talk to many developers from different Ethereum industries and ask them what exactly is bothering them the most. We see that requests are often repeated.

One of the big problems is the contract size limit. This applies to how large a contract can be or how many lines of code can be written; I see nodding in the hall, so this is really a problem. This issue will be resolved in the next update at the end of the year. The limit will increase by 2.5 times The limit will increase by 2.

5 times , so you will be able to write larger contracts with much broader functionality without dividing the code base into several parts base into several parts . We strive for quality verification of user needs and ensure that our solutions truly reach the end consumer. I'll talk about that in more detail in a moment. So, we hear about smart contract size limits, and there is also a lot of talk about speed. People say Ethereum is too slow.

If we consider the user experience, when sending a transaction, you have to wait on average about 6 seconds for it to be added. But also, for example, for markets for example, for markets , if you're building a decentralized exchange, speed really helps a lot. So accelerating Ethereum will be beneficial in this regard. An important nuance regard. An important nuance we hear about regarding Ethereum's slowness is the route from L2 to L1.

Optimistic L2 L2 to L1. Optimistic L2 solutions have a 5-day error-free confirmation window. This is a technical feature that helps maintain their safety. But the effect is that if you send a transaction from L2 to L1 to get your funds back, it can take up to 5 days for you to receive your assets. And that's very human, right?

It would be very disappointing if your funds were stuck for 5 days. So we are working a lot on this issue. And other things are actually not technical at all. People ask us: " People ask us: " What is Ethereum's plan for L2?" And how exactly does ETH gain value?

And should it even acquire value? Another non-technical point that is very close to my heart is the relatively small number of new developers coming to Ethereum. While we have a huge number of experienced developers, we see the ecosystem of newcomers being dispersed across different networks and, of course, being attracted to other industries. That's also what we're trying to work with. So, our main task at the moment is to make Ethereum faster.

We do this in three ways. The first is slot acceleration. As I mentioned, we're trying to make it parametric first so that we can reduce the slot times, and then gradually reduce it. We have 12 seconds now, we want to go to 10, and then to eight, six, four, and two. Another thing we are working on is a fast confirmation rule that helps reduce the transfer time from Ethereum L1 to L2 to around 12 or 24 seconds.

This is a 97% or 24 seconds. This is a 97% reduction in transaction finalization time that Ethereum has today. So this is a huge improvement huge improvement , and we're bringing it to market. The interesting thing is that this technology actually already exists. It is being implemented today, but it is a rule by choice, and it is based on a very deep consensus theory.

So, we help bridges and L2 solutions understand this and determine if it's a good fit for their use cases. And finally, we are working on a quick finalization. This is an item that has been on the Ethereum Foundation roadmap for a long time, but we are now prioritizing it. We have brought in one of the best rapid finalization specialists to accelerate the release, as we see this as one of the biggest hurdles for developers on Ethereum. So, a little more about this fast confirmation rule: it reduces the time it takes to transfer assets from Ethereum L1 to L2 by 97%, making the process quite fast compared to other networks and, of course, compared to Plasma.

This is an alternative to finalization. This is not the same as finalization. The assumptions are slightly different and the security level is slightly lower, but it will be extremely robust for most scenarios that require transferring assets from Ethereum L1 to L2. As already noted, this is an opt-in rule that is being implemented today. So by the end of the month, bridges will start using it, and your cross-network transactions should become significantly faster.

Secondly, regarding L2, I think it sometimes surprises people when we communicate with them . For some reason, people think that Ethereum has abandoned the L2 roadmap, but for us, that is not the case at all. We believe that it is thanks to L2 that the Ethereum network will win, as they are the distribution mechanisms for Ethereum. This is how we get new users, and it is also a way that assets issued and managed at the Ethereum L1 layer can be distributed to new users and in new use cases at L2. You can see, for example, how assets issued on L1 are used as collateral on Lyra, which is Ethereum L2 and a decentralized perpetual contract exchange (Perp DEX).

So, the first thing we do to help L2 do to help L2 is to reduce the transfer time from L1 to L2. Second, we are studying how to reduce the transfer time from L2 to L1, which I mentioned earlier. The error proof window is 5 days, which is quite long. After that, we will implement a certain evidence-based system to speed up the transfer of assets from L2 to L1. Some of these technologies already exist today, but the problem is that they are not implemented in the way we think they should be, so there is a lack of, for example, economic justification: why should it be so important to your users that you spend a lot of money on evidence-based systems.

Finally, on the non-technical side, we clarify which major markets Ethereum L1 actually wants to cover. We see this as applying to asset issuance and management. There is competition between L1 and L2, and in our opinion, that is a good thing. Competition is good, but we have to compete compete . And another thing that is relatively little talked about in Ethereum development is ETH as a token.

We actually believe that ETH is very important. There is no good Ethereum without a good ETH token. Therefore, we are considering what can be done to improve ETH's properties as a store of value. Part of this is about the technical aspect. How can we make it easier for you to store ETH yourself, how can we ensure that ETH is resistant to quantum computing, which is actually a big focus for the Ethereum Foundation.

And also how we can help him generate more income in DeFi, besides staking. Of course, there is also a lot of non-technical work to be done here. So, how can we help spread this story? It is clear that ETH is already a widely distributed asset today, which is part of its value proposition value proposition . But how do you make sure that those who make investment decisions investment decisions really read the relevant information about ETH as a token, about its performance, and take it into account when making their investment decisions investment decisions ?

So, yes. That was the main thing. Thank you for coming, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Yes, there in the back row. Yes, actually it was reduced from 7 days to 5 days.

This is another one of the iterative improvements we want to make. It's now 5 days. Let's see if we can get it down to 3 days. It requires a lot of coordination, and these L2 networks are securing billions and billions of dollars, right? So it's quite difficult, but it's something we can do.

And the ultimate goal will be to move to evidence-based systems so that you don't have to wait for that full validation window. Interestingly, Base, for example, has a multi- prover system where in principle there is a 5-day window for full proof, but it can be accelerated by providing proof, and then it is reduced to 1 day. So we're thinking, for example, about whether it's possible to measure the opportunity cost of capital that's actually frozen for those 5 minus 1 days? And if it exceeds a certain threshold, for example, the cost of generating proof, then submit proof. So, yes, we're looking for ways to gradually improve this until we reach the final goal of ZK, essentially.

Yes. Oh, yeah, cool. We should talk. So, no more questions? Yes, thank you very much.

Well, see you later .