Overview
- Vitalik Buterin published an updated Lean Ethereum strawmap that frames a three‑to‑four‑year rebuild of nearly every major protocol component to be rolled out in stages.
- The roadmap, shared after recent researcher meetings, elevates quantum resistance and a quantum‑safe blob design as urgent priorities and calls for replacing vulnerable cryptographic primitives.
- Privacy is promoted to a first‑class, layer‑1 goal that the plan would bake into the mempool, state design and transaction flows rather than leave to app‑level solutions.
- Technical changes include enshrining recursive STARK proofs for compact verification, adding new scalable state types targeting roughly 100 TB by 2030, and exploring a new low‑level VM such as leanISA or RISC‑V.
- Near‑term forks — including the Glamsterdam upgrade to raise gas limits and Hegotá as likely the last pre‑Lean fork — set milestones, but community figures warned the timetable may strain delivery after recent Ethereum Foundation staff and budget cuts.