Written by: Jang Hyuk-soo & Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News
Ethereum launched in 2015 and is now in its eleventh year. Along the way, it has transformed its consensus mechanism from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake through The Merge, and subsequently completed upgrades to Shapella, Dencun, Pectra, and Fusaka. Ethereum is constantly iterating. If you plan to invest in Ethereum or choose to build applications on it, understanding its long-term evolution goals is crucial.
In July 2025, the day after Ethereum's tenth anniversary, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed the vision of Lean Ethereum. "Lean" means eliminating redundant design. This roadmap integrates various scattered research directions within Ethereum, retaining only the core necessary modules to form a unified development blueprint.
You can think of it as a ten-year-old house, the exterior remains the same, but the foundation, pipes, and wiring have all been replaced. In February 2026, this vision was finalized as a draft document called "Strawmap." As the name suggests, this is only a framework draft, not the final solution. The community continued to discuss it, and the document was constantly updated. On June 26th, the document was revised again. The latest version plans the various hard forks from the Glamsterdam upgrade in the second half of 2026 to 2029, and clearly states that all upgrades ultimately point to five major development goals, referred to in the document as the North Star Goals. This article revolves around the five North Star Goals, depicting the future of Ethereum four years from now, in 2030. Fast L1: Further Accelerating the Mainnet The first North Star Goal is the speed of the Ethereum L1 network itself. Currently, Ethereum transactions take approximately 15 minutes to achieve final confirmation, and transaction results cannot be rolled back. With approximately 880,000 validators across the network, it's impossible to vote uniformly for every block; collecting and processing massive amounts of signatures at once exceeds the network's capacity. Therefore, Ethereum divides validators into 32 groups to vote in turn, requiring two complete voting cycles to achieve final confirmation. The simplified consensus mechanism will eliminate this bottleneck using zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs). Hundreds of thousands of votes can be compressed into a single, concise mathematical proof, allowing all validators to participate in voting for each block, with votes aggregated instantly. The ultimate goal is to achieve final confirmation through a single round of voting. The block interval will also be shortened. Ethereum currently produces a block every 12 seconds. These 12 seconds are divided into three segments, each lasting 4 seconds: the block proposer broadcasts the block to the entire network, validators vote, and the voting information is aggregated. This time standard was established in 2020, when the Beacon Chain (the Ethereum consensus layer for proof-of-stake) was primarily designed for home devices and low-speed networks. Now, with significant improvements in client software and the global network environment, real-world testing shows that the time taken for each step is far below the preset limit. Based on this, the plan is to reduce the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds in 2027–2028. In 2029–2030, a simplified consensus mechanism will be implemented, coupled with a new generation of peer-to-peer communication protocols, significantly improving the efficiency of block and voting information propagation, further reducing the block time to 4 seconds. With a block interval of 4 seconds, the average waiting time from transaction initiation to completion is approximately 2 seconds. Combined with a faster final confirmation mechanism, the entire process of transaction initiation, execution, and irreversible confirmation is compressed to within a few seconds. Another goal of streamlining the consensus mechanism is to lower the minimum staking threshold for validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH. Lowering the barrier to entry allows more users to directly participate in network governance. Ethereum's goal for 2030 is to be faster and more decentralized, allowing more people to participate in the consensus process. 1 Billion Gas Level L1: 1 Billion Gas Throughput Per Second The second North Star goal is throughput. Gas is Ethereum's unit of measurement for computational load. Currently, the Ethereum L1 network processes approximately 5 million Gas per second, with a long-term goal of 1 billion Gas per second (gigagas), increasing mainnet throughput by approximately 200 times. The biggest obstacle comes from the re-execution mechanism, the fundamental verification model of the blockchain. After a new block is generated, thousands of nodes worldwide need to independently rerun all transactions within the block. Imagine a student calculates the answer, and the entire class recalculates and checks the result. This mechanism ensures the trustworthiness of the decentralized network, but it also creates a long-standing problem: decentralization and high performance are difficult to achieve simultaneously. To allow ordinary people to run nodes, throughput must be limited; to increase throughput, a small number of high-performance nodes must be relied upon. The technology to break this deadlock remains zero-knowledge proofs. Nodes packaging blocks simultaneously submit mathematical proofs to confirm that all transactions within the block have been executed correctly. Other nodes do not need to repeat the transactions; they only need to verify the proofs. The computational power required to verify the proofs is extremely low; even a mobile device can complete the task. Applying this scheme to L1 block verification is known as L1 ZK-EVM, and the Ethereum Foundation released an official roadmap for it in February 2026. According to the "Strawmap" plan, the first phase will run traditional repetitive execution and ZK proofs in parallel, with the proof mechanism as an optional solution. In 2028–2029, Ethereum will transition to a mandatory proof mode, where blocks will be verified solely through ZK proofs. At this stage, the node verification burden will no longer increase regardless of the number of transactions in a block. This supports the continuous increase in the Gas cap, ultimately aiming for a target of 1 billion Gas per second. For ordinary users, this means that wallets (phones, browsers) can directly and completely verify the entire blockchain without trusting third-party RPC nodes. Based on this verification system, Ethereum is moving from "decentralization" to "trustlessness." Trillions of Gas: L2: A High-Speed Data Channel Supporting Massive Rollups The third North Star goal is Layer 2 (L2). L2 executes transactions outside the Ethereum mainnet, only uploading the final transaction data to L1, inheriting the security of L1. The space specifically used for storing this type of data in L1 is called a Blob, and the total capacity of Blobs determines the upper limit of the throughput of the entire L2 network. In December 2025, the Fusaka hard fork launched PeerDAS technology, allowing nodes to verify only a portion of the Blob data, laying the foundation for large-scale expansion of the Blob count. The Glamsterdam upgrade candidate will further optimize the transmission and storage efficiency of the Blob network. The "Strawmap" plan aims to steadily expand data carrying capacity year by year, ultimately reaching a data bandwidth of 1GB per second, supporting an L2 ecosystem with trillions of gas. This bandwidth is sufficient to transmit data the size of a high-definition video every few seconds. This roadmap clearly defines the boundaries of Ethereum's division of labor. Even if all upgrades are implemented, the throughput of the L1 network still has a structural upper limit compared to high-performance public chains like Solana. Applications pursuing ultra-high performance will access the Ethereum ecosystem through independent L2 networks. Robinhood Chain is a prime example. Robinhood launched its self-developed Ethereum L2 network to support tokenized stock trading, fully inheriting Ethereum's security while autonomously handling various business needs, including compliance and regulatory arrangements, on the L2 network. Therefore, by 2030, Ethereum will have a large-scale settlement network structure: L1 will be responsible for final settlement and security, while multiple L2 networks will each perform their specific functions, deeply optimized for different business scenarios. Quantum-resistant L1 network: Unafraid of quantum computing threats. The fourth North Star goal is to achieve resistance to quantum attacks. Ethereum's current signature scheme, with wallets using the ECDSA algorithm and validators using the BLS algorithm, will be vulnerable to cracking once sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has advised that the ECDSA algorithm should be phased out by 2030 and completely banned by 2035; Google has set 2029 as the deadline for switching its internal systems to quantum-resistant encryption technology. The arrival of quantum technology capable of breaking Ethereum's encryption algorithm is faster than previously expected by the market. The core solution is to replace the existing signature algorithm with a hash-based cryptographic system, a technology that can resist quantum attacks. Simultaneously, hash signatures are highly compatible with ZK proofs and are interoperable with the technical roadmap of the gigabit Gas L1 network. The Ethereum Foundation established a dedicated post-quantum R&D team in January 2026 and set aside a $1 million prize to verify the security of hash functions. According to the "Strawmap" plan, the switchover will span multiple hard forks. First, it will support the pre-registration of quantum-resistant public keys, followed by the sequential completion of validator voting signatures, transaction layer, and data layer modifications, with the L1 network based on a hash-based encryption system expected to be built by 2029. If the plan is successfully implemented, Ethereum will still be able to guarantee asset security even after the advent of the quantum computing era. Privacy-Native L1 Network: Transaction Privacy as a Fundamental Capability. The final North Star goal is a capability Ethereum has never possessed before. Currently, all Ethereum transactions are publicly available, and anyone can check account balances and all historical transaction records via an address. For individuals, this poses a privacy risk; for businesses wanting to distribute salaries and pay suppliers on-chain, publicly available transaction information directly hinders application implementation. The L1 privacy solution aims to shield transactions, putting what is currently as publicly available as a postcard into a sealed envelope. The sender, receiver, and transaction amount are hidden from the public, while relying on ZK proofs to verify that the transaction complies with the rules to the network. ZK proofs are integral to Ethereum's entire upgrade roadmap, and privacy reform is a crucial part of it. According to the "Strawmap," privacy infrastructure is expected to be implemented as early as the Hegotá hard fork. The next phase of upgrades will revamp the transaction mempool, encrypting transaction content before it is recorded on the blockchain. Of the five goals, privacy-related plans are the most vague in detail and highly susceptible to regulatory influence, resulting in the highest uncertainty. Even so, Ethereum's inclusion of L1 native privacy in its official roadmap for the first time is a significant shift in itself. Conclusion: Ethereum Four Years Later The five North Star goals are summarized as follows: Fast L1: Transaction final confirmation time reduced from 15 minutes to seconds, block interval reduced from 12 seconds to 4 seconds; 1 Billion Gas L1: ZK proofs replace the repetitive execution mechanism, L1 processes 1 billion gas per second, increasing throughput by approximately 200 times; Trillion Gas L2: L2 data carrying capacity expanded to 1GB per second, supporting a large number of Rollups running in parallel; Quantum Resistance L1: The signature system has switched to hash cryptography, readily adapting to the impact of quantum computing; Privacy-native L1: Hiding transaction information while proving transaction compliance becomes a standard Ethereum feature. The driving forces behind the roadmap's implementation are also changing. The Ethereum Foundation recently laid off approximately 20% of its staff, gradually reducing its functions, while numerous emerging organizations are filling ecosystem gaps. In June 2026, Ethlabs was officially established, a non-profit research organization supported by Ethereum ecosystem companies and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin; a week later, Ethereum Institutional, founded by former members of the foundation's corporate team, was launched. Ethereum is evolving towards a purer open-source system, with small foundations collaborating with numerous independent organizations to drive development. Of course, no plan can be guaranteed to be implemented on schedule. The "Strawmap" is merely a continuously revised draft, not a finalized roadmap. The upcoming Glamsterdam hard fork has been postponed from the first half of 2026 to the second half. Development may be delayed, the cryptographic algorithms require longer security audits, and the features included in each hard fork will continue to be adjusted based on discussions between researchers and the community. Regardless of its final form, Ethereum will remain the world's most neutral, trustless general-purpose computing network. "Strawmap" clearly sets its goal: to become faster, more capable, and more secure while retaining its core positioning.
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