Jul 6, 2026, 7:44 a.m. 3 min readEthereum preps for its biggest overhaul since the Merge, Buterin says. SummaryVitalik Buterin outlined an updated “Lean Ethereum” roadmap that aims to overhaul nearly every major part of the network over three to four years while minimizing disruption to existing applications.The plan sharply elevates quantum resistance and privacy, redesigning cryptography, data storage for rollups and core protocol features so that private, intermediary-free transactions and quantum-safe components become defaults.Lean Ethereum would cap growth of today’s flexible state while adding new, more scalable state types, adopt recursive STARKs for lighter verification, and eventually move beyond the current EVM, all while steadily increasing Ethereum’s capacity through upcoming upgrades like Glamsterdam and Hegotá.Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has a fresh set of takeaways on "Lean Ethereum," the multi-year plan to rebuild nearly every major part of the network, following research meetings.He termed it the third major iteration of Ethereum after the 2022 Merge that switched the network from mining to a stake-based system, with almost every major piece of the protocol set to be replaced over three to four years while keeping disruption to existing applications low.The ambitious Lean Ethereum idea was first laid out in July 2025 as a technical framework for the network's next decade, built around superior cryptography compared with most methods currently in use.Buterin's update – accompanied by a revised roadmap internally called a strawmap – gave further details on where the effort is heading and what has moved up in priority.Two weeks ago, Ethereum researchers met in Berlin to continue charting the protocol's long-term trajectory, following along discussions with client teams in Svalbard in April.The updated strawmap is at https://t.co/HZEerH1xxI, and I attached a picture of it to this post.My… pic.twitter.com/KPGayHSySf— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 4, 2026