Vitalik Buterin has published a comparison of the 2023 Ethereum roadmap with an updated document titled "Strawmap" on the social network X — this is the current guide for protocol updates until 2029. According to the developer, over the years, Ethereum has acquired new priorities that simply did not exist three years ago — primarily privacy and quantum security.
In 2023, Buterin described Ethereum's development as a series of six major upgrade stages: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. He has now compared that scheme with the current Strawmap and shown that some directions were completely absent in the old plan — they appeared on the roadmap later as technologies evolved.
"What really stands out is that Strawmap has completely new items that are not on the 2023 diagram, because they didn't exist at all back then," wrote Buterin, referring to that very six-stage upgrade scheme.
Privacy Becomes a Mandatory Requirement
Ethereum developers are now embedding robust privacy as a mandatory condition for the network's operation, not as an additional option. This refers to mechanisms that hide user activity and balances: for example, "privacy pools" — services where funds can be placed so that when withdrawn, they cannot be directly linked to the sender's original address.
A similar task is solved by so-called "wormholes" — a scheme proposed by developers that allows transferring assets within the network in such a way that an external observer cannot reconstruct the full transaction chain and trace the movement of funds from sender to recipient.
Also falling into this category is part of the FOCIL mechanism — Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists. This is a set of rules that should guarantee that no network participant — including large validators — can intentionally exclude others' transactions from blocks and thereby censor the network. FOCIL will become one of the key elements of the planned Hegota hard fork.
Quantum Resilience and Protocol Simplification
Two other new priorities are protection against quantum computers and so-called "Lean Ethereum." Quantum protection refers to the transition to cryptographic algorithms that will remain reliable even after the emergence of sufficiently powerful quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption methods.
"Lean Ethereum" is a working name for a large-scale protocol overhaul, during which a significant part of its internal structure is planned to be simplified and replaced, making the system more compact and understandable. Previously, Buterin called this process the "third major iteration" of Ethereum. In the long term, it might even involve replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) — the software environment where all network applications run — with alternative computational formats like RISC-V and leanISA.
Buterin also noted the growing role of zero-knowledge cryptography — methods that allow proving the truth of data without revealing the data itself. According to him, SNARK proofs (one type of such cryptography) were previously "far from mature enough" to build complex solutions for network scaling on their basis, such as native rollups — a way of processing transactions outside the main network with subsequent verification of the result in it. Separately, he mentioned that "modern AI" will in the future assist with formal verification — the mathematical verification of the correctness of Ethereum's code. Also added to the roadmap were blob and gas futures — financial instruments that did not exist at all in 2023.
What Ethereum Has Moved Away From
Some previous ideas have been reconsidered or replaced with more successful solutions — among them, according to Buterin, are "many EVM improvements" that ultimately were not needed thanks to the new architectural approach.
The main goals Buterin formulated for the network are:
protection against quantum computers
priority of user privacy
high level of security
resistance to censorship
high performance and scalability while meeting all the above conditions
simplified architecture ("Lean Ethereum")
The Strawmap itself is a working document planned for regular review, not a rigid schedule with fixed dates. Previously, the Ethereum Foundation has been criticized for delays in updates and for alleged inefficient allocation of resources.
AI Perspective
From the perspective of data analysis, the stated priority of quantum resilience looks not like an abstract risk but a matter of timing. According to Google data, cracking the elliptic-curve cryptography protecting Ethereum might require less than 500,000 physical qubits, and one researcher estimates the onset of "Q-Day" as early as 2032. Three to four years is a short timeframe to migrate millions of wallets and smart contracts to new signature algorithms, especially considering that old addresses with exposed public keys will remain vulnerable even after the network transitions to post-quantum cryptography.
Will Ethereum manage to complete this migration before expert estimates shift even closer to the present?
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