Meet the 5 most powerful people in crypto right now and what they’re planning next#USGDPDataOnChain

3. Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum)

Ethereum’s May 2025 Pectra upgrade (now live) shipped EIP-7702, which lets regular externally owned accounts (EOAs) act like smart-contract accounts. This account-abstraction step cascades into wallets, layer 2s (L2s) and payments.

Pectra also raised validator limits, altering staking economics and node operations. Buterin’s influence (through writing, research and core-dev work) continues to shape what gets “enshrined” next.

Power in practice

Pectra live: EIP-7702 allows EOAs to temporarily execute code (session keys, social recovery, batched actions) while staying compatible with ERC-4337, unlocking a smoother wallet UX.

Validator/staking updates: The maximum effective balance per validator jumped from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, consolidating stake and lowering consensus overhead.

What Vitalik Buterin is planning next

History expiry (EIP-4444): Partial expiry rolled out in July 2025, shrinking disk requirements and paving the way for lighter nodes. Further iterations are expected.

Verkle trees and statelessness: Ongoing research aims to shift Ethereum to a Verkle-based state, enabling stateless clients and reducing hardware barriers.

Enshrined PBS (ePBS): Active work continues on embedding proposer-builder separation to harden censorship resistance and streamline maximal extractable value (MEV) flows.

Ethereum still sets norms for L2s, wallets and onchain finance. Buterin’s roadmap will directly influence costs, performance and the developer experience across the wider ecosystem.

4: Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana)

Solana’s mix of high throughput and low fees has made it a hub for consumer-facing apps and fast USD settlement. Stablecoin activity has surged on the network in 2025.

Yakovenko’s biggest swing is Firedancer (an independent validator client built by Jump to boost resilience and capacity). If successful, it would end Solana’s reliance on a single dominant client and lock in true client diversity.