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Quantum computers could break $ETH before the 2028 US elections, so blockchain must transition to quantum-resistant cryptography within a few years, believes Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He spoke about this at the Devconnect conference in Buenos Aires, reports DL News.

When the price $ETH is once again approaching the zone around $3000, old screenshots with forecasts about $5000 and higher immediately pop up in the feed. On an emotional level, it seems: if the market has already seen such targets in analytical trends, then surpassing $3000 should be a matter of technique. But the market is not obliged to fulfill anyone's expectations. Right now, the $3000 level for ETH is not just a pretty number, but a zone where the interests of those who bought during dips and those who want to lock in profits after a long period of uncertainty converge.

Right now, the picture in the market looks almost schizophrenic: derivative indicators show that many traders continue to bet on the further decline of Bitcoin and Ethereum, increasing shorts and hedging portfolios against downturns. At the same time, a major business publication features a column by the leaders of one of the largest global asset management firms, where tokenization is called the biggest revolution in financial infrastructure since the advent of double-entry bookkeeping. Over the past 20 months, the market for tokenized 'traditional' assets has reportedly grown by about 300%, and the shift to a new architecture of the financial system has already begun and is considered inevitable. On one screen — red candles and a bet on decline, on another — a discussion about a decade-long trend that should completely reformat the flow of capital.

The volume held on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges for Ethereum has decreased to 8.7% of the total supply (~16.6 million $ETH ). Such values have not been observed since the network's launch in 2015.

Since July 2025, the indicator has fallen by approximately 20%. The sharp withdrawal of assets coincided with the popularization of DAT companies, which began to buy up the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

The Fusaka update was a logical continuation of Ethereum's course towards scaling without a drastic increase in node requirements. This is the second major hard fork of the network in 2025 after the spring update, and it was officially activated on the mainnet in early December. Its goal is not to 'reinvent' Ethereum but to prepare the base layer for life in a world where the lion's share of user traffic passes through second-layer networks. From a technical standpoint, it involves reassembling how the database processes and stores data so that L2 can scale securely and cheaply on top of it.

After the widespread adoption of second-layer scaling concepts in the Ethereum ecosystem, a new challenge emerged for the community: how to restore the base chain's status as a fundamental coordination layer amidst numerous partially duplicative and loosely connected solutions. Against this backdrop, developers propose the EIL (Ethereum Interop Layer) standard as an architectural approach that should grant the EVM ecosystem the properties of a unified whole, rather than a set of disparate networks and tools. Essentially, this involves creating a compatibility layer capable of redefining the user experience when working with $ETH and derivative networks.

The price of Ethereum ($ETH ) showed growth after the activation of the Fusaka update on the blockchain. The leading altcoin reached $3,238 on December 4, setting a new maximum in two and a half weeks.
In 24 hours, ETH has increased by 4%, while Bitcoin ($BTC ) lost 0.2%, and the total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has grown by 1% during the same period. As of 15:45 MSK, Ethereum is trading at around $3,180.

The network $ETH has set a new benchmark for throughput, demonstrating a total figure of around 31,000 transactions per second. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of this volume—about 95%—was processed by second-layer (L2) solutions operating on top of the base layer. Such a result emphasizes that the scaling of the ecosystem occurs not through radical changes to L1 parameters, but by offloading the main transactional load to specialized overlay protocols.

According to the businessman, the main catalyst for the growth of the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization will be the increasing popularity of tokenization of securities.
«Cryptocurrency has been disappointing for the past few months. Prices are falling and optimism is quickly giving way to pessimism. But the real story is tokenization. The best years of growth are ahead: a 200-fold increase in the ecosystem of tokenized assets is coming, and this is just the beginning,» Lee shared his thoughts.