Key Takeaways:
Vitalik Buterin's "Lean Ethereum" strawmap proposes the most sweeping protocol redesign since the Merge, touching every layer of the network.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on July 4 unveiled a "Lean Ethereum" strawmap that prioritizes quantum resistance, scalability and privacy across a series of upgrades scheduled over the next three to four years, describing the transformation as comparable in scope to the September 2022 Merge.
"Quantum safety has shifted up a LOT in priority," Buterin said on X, adding that finalizing a quantum-safe solution for blobs has become urgent. Privacy, he said, is now a "first class goal" of protocol development rather than an application-layer feature.
The roadmap calls for replacing direct transaction re-execution with recursive STARK-based verification, redesigning the consensus mechanism for one- or two-round finality, and introducing multidimensional gas pricing. Buterin also proposed a new state architecture that could support roughly 2 terabytes of today's dynamic state alongside 100 terabytes of scalable state for ERC-20 tokens, NFTs and DeFi applications — a design that could reduce transaction fees by more than 10 times for migrated applications, according to the strawmap.
The overhaul comes as the Ethereum Foundation restructures, having laid off roughly 20% of its staff last month to cut its budget by 40%, and follows the departure of several senior contributors including researchers Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak and protocol contributors Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot. The first fork under the new direction, Glamsterdam, is expected to raise Ethereum's gas limit, while H-star (Hegota) will be the last pre-streamlined fork before the network fully enters the "Lean Ethereum" era.
New virtual machine and EVM transition
Buterin is pushing for the development of a new execution environment such as RISC-V or leanISA to replace the Ethereum Virtual Machine over the longer term. These alternatives could improve recursive proof generation, privacy and overall protocol efficiency, he said. Under this vision, the EVM would eventually serve primarily as a compiler target, with Ethereum executing directly on a more efficient virtual machine.
The shift extends Buterin's broader thinking on Ethereum's future. Earlier this year, he argued that artificial intelligence could improve Ethereum governance by helping communities process complex decisions more efficiently, while cautioning that excessive delegation risks concentrating power.
Skepticism over delivery timeline
Dankrad Feist, a researcher behind the payments-focused layer-1 Tempo blockchain, praised the plan but argued the three- to four-year timeline is too slow, saying AI could help developers ship the upgrades within a year. Crypto analyst Ignas Fiodorovas also supported the direction but cast doubt on the Ethereum Foundation's ability to deliver on schedule, citing the organization's history of missing deadlines. Fiodorovas said the only key feature missing from the roadmap was improved tokenomics for Ether, which has continued to slide in price amid a broader market downturn.
ETH traded at $1,792 as of 14:30 UTC, up 3% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
