Vitalik Buterin just published the Ethereum Foundation’s 2026 Strawmap, a big shift from where we were a few years ago. This new roadmap doubles down on making the network quantum-resistant, baking in serious privacy features, and finally brings native rollups into the mix. Priorities that did not exist in the 2023 version.
The roadmap introduces LeanSPHINCS post-quantum signatures [an optimized, lightweight variant of (SPHINCS+)], zkzk frames [combining zero-knowledge (ZK) Scalable Transparent ARgument of Knowledge (STARK) aggregation with post-quantum signature schemes] for scalable proof aggregation, and a leaner protocol core that can be formally verified at scale using modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Quantum safety was moved up the queue.
What’s new in the 2026 Strawmap
The updated roadmap represents a structural shift in Ethereum’s development. Several categories from the 2023 roadmap were deprioritized or replaced:
- Verkle trees gave way to unified binary trees and then to Partitioned Binary Trees (PBT)
- State expiry was replaced with new state types
- Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) and many Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) improvements were deprioritized
But the most striking change is the entirely new one. Privacy now receives “first-class attention,” covering keyed nonces, recent roots, aspects of Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), lean privacy pools, and wormholes.
Aggressive post-quantum scaling is addressed through leanSPHINCS signatures and aggregation, plus zkzk frames (EIP-8288) that let transactions declare signatures and proofs as dependencies that a block builder can collapse into a single recursive proof, holding down gas costs.
Native rollups are now on the roadmap, with Buterin noting that Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (SNARKs) “were nowhere near mature enough to even consider this back in 2023.”
The lean protocol core and formal verification
To this point, the roadmap envisions a significantly leaner Ethereum core. zkzk frames already imply that the protocol will expose to users an instruction set architecture that is not the EVM, with leading candidates being lean Instruction Set Architecture (leanISA) and Reduced Instruction Set Computer Five (RISC-V); both simpler, more modern, and efficient than the EVM.
In this update, Buterin raised a provocative question: “Once they’re there, why not expose them to developers everywhere? [And then, why not turn the EVM into an intermediate representation (IR) on top of that Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), instead of an enshrined feature massively complicating the base protocol?].”
Formal verification is now a central pillar, with the roadmap treating STARKs and AI-accelerated formal verification as objects “that we are okay betting the technical future of Ethereum on.”
One primitive (the “aggregate to union verified dependencies” primitive) is expected to be used in three places in the protocol: the execution layer, consensus layer, and data layer. This dependency requires formal verification, which is itself only feasible with modern AI tools.
The Ethereum Foundation’s leaner future and the Strawmap’s “Third Era”
Beyond just the technical goals of the Strawmap, there’s a big organizational shake-up happening behind the scenes. Vitalik Buterin confirmed back in June that the Ethereum Foundation is cutting its budget by about 40 percent as it pivots to a long-term “endowment-based” model. This move, which he’s called a “painful but necessary sacrifice,” is aimed at getting annual spending down from around 15 percent of the remaining funds to a much more sustainable 5 percent by 2030.
As part of the restructuring, the Foundation is realigning around five core clusters that support its Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security (CROPs) mandate (censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security) and has led to the launch of new organizations like EthLabs and EthSystems.
The Strawmap itself, covering seven planned hard forks through 2029, is a product of this renewed focus. These upcoming upgrades are aiming for a massive jump in throughput, hitting 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) on Layer-1 (L1) and a huge 10 million TPS on Layer-2 (L2) scalability, using tools like zkEVMs, data availability sampling, and a new “Lean” protocol design to pull it off, with the ultimate goal of building a more streamlined Ethereum that could eventually feel a bit like Bitcoin’s minimalist approach.
