Ethereum may be about to make a big move.

Recently, Vitalik Buterin sent a signal in an interview—"Ethereum's next step will surprise everyone." This low-profile founder rarely makes such high-profile statements, and history shows what each of his words has meant. Remember in 2015 when he predicted "Ethereum will become the world's computer"? No one paid attention, but it later surged 1000 times. Before the 2021 Merge, hints directly drove ETH from $2,000 to $4,800.

Now it's happening.

The data is in front of us. After the Merge upgrade, Ethereum's energy consumption plummeted by 99.9%—the environmental protection card is fully solidified. On-chain daily active users remain stable above 500,000, and the locked value in DeFi ecosystems has returned to $40 billion. Most importantly: 26 million ETH have been staked, accounting for 20% of the total circulating supply. What does this mean? Whales and institutions have voted with real money—they are betting on Ethereum's future.

What exactly is Vitalik preparing?

Three areas are worth paying attention to. First is the core breakthrough in performance—the Danksharding upgrade is now in countdown, aiming to increase transaction speed by 100 times and reduce gas fees to nearly zero. The testnet data has already been validated, capable of processing 100,000 transactions per second. Imagine what it will be like for on-chain games and DeFi applications that are currently stuck due to network congestion. The entire ecosystem's imagination space will instantly open up.