Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled an updated roadmap he calls the network’s third major transformation, comparable in scale to the 2022 Merge that ended proof-of-work mining. Nearly every core component of the protocol will be rebuilt over three to four years, he said, without forcing existing applications to migrate.
Buterin shared his conclusions in a post on July 4, 2026, following a gathering of Ethereum researchers in Berlin. The updated plan, called ‘Lean Ethereum,’ was first sketched out in 2025 and is publicly tracked at strawmap.org.
A New Verification Model at the Core
The most fundamental change is how the network validates itself. Rather than requiring every node to re-execute every transaction, Ethereum would shift to verifying a compact cryptographic proof of the chain using recursive STARKs, a type of zero-knowledge proof that lets one party prove a computation was done correctly without redoing it. Buterin wants the approach formally ‘enshrined’ as a native protocol component.
Alongside it, he floated a simpler consensus mechanism with one or two-round finality, multidimensional gas pricing, and, over the longer term, a shift beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine toward an alternative instruction set such as RISC-V.
Quantum Safety and Privacy Elevated to Core Goals
Buterin stated that defending against Q-Day, the theoretical point at which quantum computers could break the cryptography securing today’s blockchains, has climbed the development agenda. All cryptographically vulnerable components are slated for replacement with quantum-safe alternatives, and work on quantum-resistant ‘blobs’ is already months underway.
Privacy has been reclassified from an optional add-on to a ‘first-class goal,’ embedded directly into protocol components including the mempool and the state tree. The entire overhaul is intended to rest on formal verification.
Radical Change to Data Storage
Buterin sketched a vision of the Ethereum network by 2030 holding roughly 2 terabytes of today’s flexible ‘dynamic’ state alongside 100 terabytes of a new, more scalable but restrictive storage type. The new format is well suited to tokens, NFTs, and much of DeFi, though less appropriate for complex contracts such as decentralised exchanges.
Migrating an ERC-20 token to the new storage type would not be mandatory, Buterin said, but doing so could cut transaction fees by more than tenfold.
Upgrade Timeline and Foundation Context
The changes will not arrive all at once. Buterin described the upcoming Hegota fork as likely the last major upgrade before the ‘Lean’ era formally begins. A large gas-limit increase is expected at the nearer-term Glamsterdam upgrade, with further capacity and speed improvements projected over approximately five years.
The roadmap lands as the Ethereum Foundation itself has tightened operations. The Foundation recently cut roughly 20 percent of its workforce in what it described as a ‘leaner’ reorganisation and has reduced its budget. Earlier Ethereum upgrades, including the Merge, faced repeated delays before implementation.
