Ethereum’s core research and development community has responded favorably to an updated long-term roadmap shared by co-founder Vitalik Buterin earlier this week. The proposal, known as the “Lean Ethereum” strawmap, outlines a multi-year overhaul of the smart contract and blockchain network that many see as the protocol’s third major evolution following the 2022 Merge.
While researchers and client-team members broadly endorse the direction—emphasizing greater efficiency, stronger privacy protections, and resistance to emerging threats like quantum computing—they are urging faster progress to keep pace with competitors.
Buterin described the plan not as a single hard fork but as a coordinated series of upgrades rolling out over roughly three to four years.
The vision calls for replacing large portions of the current protocol while preserving backward compatibility for existing applications.
Two weeks ago, Ethereum researchers met in Berlin to continue charting the protocol's long-term trajectory, following along discussions with client teams in Svalbard in April.
The updated strawmap is at https://t.co/HZEerH1xxI, and I attached a picture of it to this post.
My… pic.twitter.com/KPGayHSySf
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 4, 2026
Central elements include shifting transaction verification from direct re-execution to enshrined recursive STARK proofs, adopting quantum-resistant cryptography across the stack, and simplifying the consensus mechanism with decoupled data availability and faster (one- or two-round) finality.
Additional changes encompass multidimensional gas pricing, updates to client software architecture, and formal verification of protocol components for improved security.
A particularly notable shift involves how the network handles state—the data representing accounts, balances, and smart contracts.
The roadmap envisions keeping today’s flexible “dynamic” state relatively contained (around 2 terabytes in a possible 2030 scenario) while introducing new, more restrictive but highly scalable state types (potentially reaching 100 terabytes).
These newer formats, drawing on concepts like UTXOs, ring buffers, and temporary state, would be especially efficient for common use cases such as ERC-20 tokens, NFTs, and many DeFi applications.
Apps could opt into the optimized paths for dramatically lower fees—potentially more than 10x cheaper in some cases—without being forced to rewrite everything.
Privacy moves from an afterthought to a core design principle.
Protocol designers are now explicitly considering how quantum-safe, intermediary-free private transactions would flow through proposed features like the mempool and state structures.
The accompanying visual “strawmap” (a living draft document) highlights five north-star goals: sub-second finality on Layer 1, gigagas-per-second throughput on L1 via zkEVM techniques, teragas-scale capacity on Layer 2, post-quantum security, and native private transfers at the base layer.
Prominent voices in the ecosystem have voiced strong support for these priorities while highlighting execution challenges.
Eli Ben-Sasson of StarkWare praised the elevated focus on recursive STARKs, privacy, formal verification, and quantum safety, calling the cryptographic direction a major advance.
He raised questions about the implications of new state types and stressed that the proposed three-to-four-year timeline feels too slow, particularly for quantum readiness.
Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist described the overall vision as “really cool,” noting its potential for near-instant finality and much higher throughput, but argued the community should target roughly one year by leveraging recent advances in AI tooling.
Barnabé Monnot, another Ethereum Foundation researcher, observed refinements from the February version of the strawmap, including adjustments to block-production upgrades and consensus changes aimed at enabling quicker finality and better censorship resistance.
The prevailing sentiment is one of alignment on goals paired with impatience on delivery.
Researchers note that the technical foundations appear solid and that past successful transitions, such as the Merge, demonstrate Ethereum’s ability to evolve without fracturing its ecosystem.
However, several ETH developers have now emphasized that the real test will be implementation speed amid ongoing competition from other blockchains and shifting market dynamics.
The updated strawmap builds on in-person discussions among researchers in Berlin and earlier client-team meetings. It positions Ethereum for long-term resilience by simplifying where possible, future-proofing against quantum threats, and making scalability and privacy first-class concerns.