American venture capitalist and entrepreneur Fred Wilson said on Monday that he believes cryptocurrencies will become even more user-friendly by 2026. He argued that this year’s market breakthrough will only come from making blockchain invincible for end users.
Wilson’s predictions for the cryptocurrency market are part of a larger prediction for 2026. His prediction is consistent with his long-held view that blockchain’s future depends on ease of use rather than technical capabilities.
Wilson calls for user-friendly blockchain interface
wilson claimed A more user-friendly interface could help hide the complexity of blockchain. He believes these interfaces will ease the way users use, spend, trade, and send tokens across the blockchain.
The American businessman is a founding partner of US company Union Square Ventures (USV), which was an early investor in Twitter, Tumblr, and Etsy. He was also an early investor in Ethereum and Filecoin, and remains a well-known voice in the long-term debate about how blockchain can be accepted into the mainstream.
Wilson has previously been more vocal about the shortsightedness of the crypto industry, saying blockchain is the next big thing after social and mobile. The entrepreneur also resists the hype culture and token speculation in the space.
He warned that short-term greed threatens the industry’s long-term credibility. The venture capitalist highlighted features such as decentralized identity, peer-to-peer finance, and an open protocol that users can build on.
wilson mentioned A 2018 blog post states that one of the drawbacks of the technology is that there is no financial incentive to create and maintain open protocols. He also argued that open protocols cannot be easily monetized through traditional means.
Vitalik Buterin solves Ethereum’s long-standing trilemma
With ZKEVM in alpha stage (production-quality performance, the rest of the work is secure) and PeerDAS up and running on mainnet, it’s time to dive into what this combination means for Ethereum.
These are not small improvements. They have Ethereum…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 3, 2026
Wilson’s call for a more user-friendly blockchain in 2026 comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said on Monday that he had solved blockchain’s long-standing trilemma. He revealed that recent network upgrades have turned Ethereum into a more powerful decentralized network capable of security, decentralization, and scalability.
“Today, Ethereum with PeerDAS (2025) and ZK-EVM (we expect a small portion of the network to use Ethereum in 2026) provides decentralization, consensus, and high bandwidth.”
–Vitalik ButerinCo-founder of Ethereum.
Buterin was referring to peer-to-peer data availability sampling and zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machines. He argued that the fact that ZKEVM has reached alpha stage (production-quality performance, the rest of the work is secure) and PeerDAS is up and running on mainnet raises questions about what this combination means for Ethereum.
The Ethereum co-founder said that these combinations are not new improvements, but rather changes to ETH to become a more powerful network. He acknowledged that this trilemma is resolved in the code that actually executes, but not on paper. Cryptocurrency tycoon revealed Half (data availability sampling) is on mainnet and the other half (ZK-EVM) is production quality.
Buterin predicts that BAL and ePBS will significantly increase ZKEVM-independent gas limits in 2026. He also believes that this year will be the first opportunity to run ZKEVM mode.
Ethereum co-founders predict additional changes will be made by 2028, including gas price changes, state structure changes, and adjustments to execution payloads stored in blobs to ensure safety with higher gas limits. From 2027 to 2030, he sees the gas limit increasing further as ZKEVM becomes the main block validator for ETH.
Buterin also called for building decentralized blocks on Ethereum. With this distributed block, a complete block is never made up of a single piece. He said the effort isn’t needed long-term, but it’s worth it for the company.
Before that, he wants to decentralize block construction authority as much as possible. Buterin argued that with a decentralized builder marketplace, it can be done both within and outside of the protocol. He hopes this will reduce the risk of central interference with real-time transactions.
