Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined an ambitious long-term vision for the blockchain’s future, describing a multi-year initiative known as “Lean Ethereum” that aims to fundamentally redesign many of the network’s core components while preserving compatibility for existing applications.
In a post published on X, Buterin summarized discussions held during a recent Ethereum research meeting in Berlin, which followed protocol planning sessions with client development teams in Svalbard earlier this year. The discussions culminated in an updated protocol “strawmap” that outlines research priorities expected to shape Ethereum’s evolution over the next three to four years.
Rather than a single network upgrade, Buterin described Lean Ethereum as a collection of incremental protocol improvements that together represent the blockchain’s “third major iteration,” following Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake through The Merge in 2022.
The proposal remains a research roadmap rather than a finalized implementation plan. Many of the concepts outlined are still under active development and would require extensive testing, community discussion and approval before becoming part of Ethereum’s protocol.
Lean Ethereum Prioritizes Scalability, Security and Simplicity
Among the most significant proposals is replacing traditional transaction verification with recursive STARK proofs, a cryptographic approach designed to improve scalability while reducing verification costs. Recursive STARKs are expected to become an integral part of Ethereum’s core protocol if the roadmap is ultimately implemented.
Another major priority is quantum resistance. Buterin said Ethereum researchers have elevated quantum-safe cryptography from a long-term consideration to an urgent development objective, reflecting growing awareness that advances in quantum computing could eventually threaten cryptographic systems currently used across blockchain networks.
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The roadmap also envisions substantial changes to Ethereum’s consensus mechanism, including faster transaction finality, multidimensional gas pricing and redesigned state storage that could allow the blockchain to scale far beyond its current capacity.
According to Buterin, privacy is also becoming a foundational design principle rather than an optional feature. Future protocol components—including the mempool and state architecture—are expected to be designed with privacy-preserving transactions in mind while remaining compatible with quantum-safe cryptographic techniques.
Another research priority involves expanding the use of formal verification, a mathematical process used to prove software behaves as intended. Formal verification is already employed in parts of Ethereum’s ecosystem, but Buterin said researchers want to extend its use across substantially more of the protocol to improve reliability and security.
New State Architecture Could Dramatically Increase Ethereum’s Capacity
One of the roadmap’s most transformative proposals involves redesigning Ethereum’s state model—the data that every node maintains to validate the network.
Rather than indefinitely scaling today’s dynamic state architecture, researchers are exploring the addition of new, more scalable forms of state storage optimized for common blockchain applications such as ERC-20 tokens, NFTs and many decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
Under one illustrative example shared by Buterin, Ethereum in 2030 could support approximately 2 terabytes of traditional dynamic state alongside roughly 100 terabytes of new, more scalable state designed with stricter operational constraints.
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The approach would allow existing decentralized applications to continue operating without mandatory rewrites while creating financial incentives for developers to migrate compatible applications to more efficient storage models that could significantly reduce transaction costs.
Researchers are also evaluating future virtual machine architectures beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), with candidates including RISC-V and leanISA. While the EVM would likely remain familiar to developers, Buterin suggested the protocol itself could eventually operate directly on a lower-level execution architecture, improving both scalability and support for advanced cryptographic applications.
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In addition, Ethereum developers expect to continue increasing gas limits, expanding blob capacity and reducing slot times over the coming years as client software becomes more efficient and protocol upgrades improve network performance.
Although the roadmap represents one of Ethereum’s most comprehensive long-term visions since The Merge, nearly all of the proposed changes remain subject to ongoing research, technical review and community governance. Their eventual implementation will depend on consensus among Ethereum’s developer community and successful testing across future protocol upgrades.
