Ethereum active addresses surpass 15M as Buterin sets 2025 goals

Ethereum  (CRYPTO:ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has laid out his 2025 development goals as the network recorded over 15.4 million unique weekly active addresses, including nearly 13.45 million on layer-2 platforms, based on data from GrowThePie.

In an April 30 post on the blockchain-based platform Farcaster, Buterin detailed his focus areas for the year ahead.

These include achieving single-slot finality, implementing statelessness, enhancing privacy measures, and strengthening decentralised infrastructure.

Buterin wrote that he would be “researching single-slot finality on Ethereum,” which he described as a proposed upgrade that would allow blocks to become final within a single slot, or roughly 12 seconds. The change could reduce transaction finality time and improve user experience.

Another priority is to make Ethereum stateless. According to Buterin, this would involve a system where “nodes no longer store the full state,” and instead, “users provide the necessary state data (witnesses) with each transaction.”

He noted that this could help scale the network while improving decentralisation.

He also emphasised that privacy remains critical to Ethereum’s roadmap.

“Ensuring Ethereum is usable in a way that is highly secure, free of centralised intermediaries and privacy-friendly,” Buterin said.

Earlier this month, Buterin released a short-term privacy roadmap, presenting potential solutions to improve data confidentiality on the network.

The post comes amid changes at the Ethereum Foundation, where co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak said Buterin now has increased time to focus on “research and exploration.”

“Each time Vitalik shares insights or communicates a direction, he accelerates major long‑term breakthroughs,” Stańczak added.

Buterin’s vision extends beyond the protocol layer.

He said he intends to work on developing better encrypted messaging, software documentation, and leading their adoption in the ecosystem.

He also mentioned possible research into prediction markets and related technology.

Additionally, Buterin expressed interest in lower-level development areas, citing cryptography, operating systems, hardware, physical infrastructure and biological defence, though he did not elaborate further.

He clarified that there are active areas of Ethereum development he is not personally handling, such as scalability upgrades and performance tuning.

At the time of reporting, the Ethereum price was $1,809.43.