Ethereum’s Next Upgrade Could Change the Network Forever: What Vitalik Is Planning for 2030

Ethereum’s next upgrade is supposed to start changing how the network works at a much deeper level.

Glamsterdam, targeted for Q4 2026, is the next major hard fork. But the bigger story now comes from Vitalik Buterin’s vision for what follows. In a September 27 post, Buterin argued that by 2030 Ethereum could become something qualitatively different from the blockchain model people know today: a “cryptographic world computer” built around zero-knowledge proofs, parallel computation, stronger privacy, faster finality, and post-quantum security.

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What Is Ethereum’s Next Upgrade?

Ethereum’s next upgrade is Glamsterdam, currently targeted for Q4 2026.

Its two headline changes are enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, and block-level access lists.

Today, many Ethereum validators outsource block construction to specialized builders using external infrastructure. EIP-7732 would bring that separation directly into Ethereum’s protocol. Validators could safely use specialized builders without relying on trusted middleware, while block processing and consensus validation would be separated more efficiently.