TL;DR:
- Vitalik Buterin described Lean Ethereum as the network’s biggest rebuild since the Merge, following research meetings in Berlin and earlier client-team discussions in Svalbard.
- The roadmap targets a three-to-four-year overhaul covering quantum resistance, privacy, rollup data storage, recursive STARK verification, state management and eventual post-EVM architecture.
- Glamsterdam is expected to bring a major capacity increase, while Hegotá may be the final fork before the Lean era begins fully in practice.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has described “Lean Ethereum” as the network’s biggest rebuild since the Merge, after recent research meetings in Berlin and earlier discussions with client teams in Svalbard. The revised roadmap, called a strawmap, sketches a three-to-four-year overhaul that would replace nearly every major protocol component while keeping disruption to existing applications low. It is a sweeping claim, and the ambition feels almost paradoxical: Ethereum wants to become leaner by rebuilding more, not less, across cryptography, state management, privacy, verification and capacity.
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
Quantum safety, privacy and state move up the roadmap
Quantum resistance has moved sharply higher in the roadmap, reflecting concerns that future quantum computers could eventually break cryptography used by blockchains. Buterin said Ethereum now treats replacing every quantum-vulnerable component with quantum-safe alternatives as urgent, including the cheap data storage layer used by rollups. Privacy has also become a first-class goal rather than an afterthought, with core components designed so private, intermediary-free transactions can pass through by default. The roadmap elevates defense and privacy together, signaling that Ethereum’s next decade is being planned around risks not yet fully visible.
The technical rebuild also changes how Ethereum verifies itself. Instead of requiring every node to rerun every transaction, the plan relies on recursive STARKs, allowing nodes to check compact proofs that work was done correctly. The most disruptive change may be state, the network’s current memory of accounts, balances and smart-contract data. The plan keeps today’s flexible dynamic state but limits its growth, while adding cheaper, more scalable state types. Ethereum is trying to reduce node burden, even as total state capacity could expand from about 2 terabytes to more than 100 terabytes by 2030.
Ethereum may also eventually move beyond the EVM, the core engine that runs smart contracts, with RISC-V among the leading candidates for a simpler base. Buterin prefers the EVM becoming a higher-level convenience while the protocol runs underneath on that leaner architecture, though he cautioned that such a shift remains far off. Capacity would rise through higher transaction ceilings, larger data limits and shorter block times, with Glamsterdam expected to bring a major increase and Hegotá likely to be the final fork before the Lean era. The rebuild is ultimately a long-horizon governance bet. That patience may determine whether Ethereum can modernize deeply without fracturing its existing application base over time.
