In brief
Vitalik Buterin published an updated "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, which he calls the network's third major iteration following 2022’s Merge.
The plan would replace “almost every major piece of the protocol” over three to four years, enshrining recursive STARK proofs and swapping quantum-vulnerable cryptography for quantum-safe alternatives.
Buterin said privacy is now a "first class goal" and floated a future Ethereum holding far more data through new, more scalable types of state.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has laid out an updated vision for the blockchain's next several years, billing it as the most sweeping rebuild since the network ditched mining and declaring that Ethereum is "reinventing itself."In a tweet on Saturday, Buterin shared his takeaways from a recent gathering of Ethereum researchers in Berlin, along with a refreshed "strawmap," a draft roadmap published at strawmap.org. He framed "Lean Ethereum," first sketched out in 2025, as the protocol's third major iteration, on par with the 2022 Merge that moved Ethereum to proof-of-stake. Almost every major component will be replaced over three or four years, he said, without forcing existing apps to migrate.
