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Vitalik Buterin’s new essay describes an Ethereum where nodes verify cryptographic proofs and sample data instead of re-executing every block, moving much application computation offchain.
Buterin published “The cryptographic world computer” on his blog on September 27 and shared it on X, writing that the result is “really not just a blockchain anymore” but a hybrid of blockchains and modern cryptography. He frames the change as the network’s primary story starting after the Hegota fork planned for 2027. A decade ago, he wrote, distributing work this way failed for one reason: “the missing ingredient was verification.”
What nodes would do instead
Today a node re-runs every block to check it. Under the plan, it would verify a proof that a block’s computation was done correctly and confirm the data behind it exists. The sampling half is already live: PeerDAS, a method that lets nodes confirm data availability by checking small portions of data instead of downloading everything, shipped in the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025. Buterin wrote that it will later cover full block contents.
Signatures and block building move off the critical path
Under draft EIP-8288, which Buterin co-authored with Thomas Coratger in June, signatures would be aggregated offchain, with a single one onchain per block, and only entry nodes would see individual signatures and proofs. FOCIL, a feature planned for Hegota, lets multiple validators rather than a single block builder force valid transactions into blocks, which makes censorship harder.
What stays onchain is the argument
Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot said proofs save the network work and enable very light nodes, but he argued a world computer should remain the main owner of its state onchain, because accessible, composable state is central to Ethereum’s network effects. Buterin himself flagged the harder engineering problem: managing and parallelizing access to very large amounts of Ethereum’s state, he wrote, will likely be harder than making zero-knowledge proofs efficient and safe. He also wrote that Ethereum will never have latency that competes with servers, though infrastructure built around it could.
The next scheduled step is Glamsterdam’s Sepolia testnet fork on October 6, ahead of a Q4 2026 mainnet window; Hegota is planned for 2027 with no confirmed date.
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