Ethereum ‘Solves’ Trilemma: Buterin Declares PeerDAS & ZK-EVMs Production-Ready
Vitalik Buterin asserts the blockchain trilemma is solved via live PeerDAS and ZK-EVM code, as BlackRock’s ETH holdings top $10 billion.
The Lede
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has declared the blockchain trilemma officially “solved” with live, running code rather than theoretical roadmaps. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) this weekend, Buterin asserted that the combination of Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS) and production-grade Zero-Knowledge EVMs (ZK-EVMs) now delivers the holy grail of decentralization, security, and scalability. Ether (ETH) held steady at $3,164 (+0.45%) following the announcement, reflecting a market that had largely priced in the technical milestone.
The Execution
Buterin’s claim hinges on two specific engineering breakthroughs achieving production status simultaneously:
- Data Availability (Live): PeerDAS is now active on mainnet, allowing the network to sample data availability without burdening individual nodes with full blob downloads.
- Execution (Production-Ready): ZK-EVMs have reached “production-quality on performance,” with only safety auditing remaining before full-scale deployment.
The trilemma has been solved. Not on paper, but with live running code, of which one half (data availability sampling) is on mainnet today, and the other half (ZK-EVMs) is production-quality on performance today.
Institutional Context
The timing of the technical completion aligns with a massive scaling of institutional exposure. BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) reported holdings of 3.48 million ETH (approximately $10.9 billion) as of January 2, 2026, signaling that traditional finance is comfortable with the network’s risk profile even before the final ZK-EVM safety rails are fully removed.
The Roadmap
With the architecture in place, the focus shifts to capacity. Buterin outlined that 2026 will see substantial gas limit increases driven by Bandwidth Allocation Limits (BALs) and enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS). The network, which currently hosts over 66% of all tokenized real-world assets (RWA), is now technically positioned to support high-frequency institutional throughput without centralizing node operation.
