Ethereum Roadmap Targets 10M TPS
Ethereum's new roadmap targets 10,000 TPS on L1 and 10 million on L2s, with privacy transactions and quantum resistance as priorities. L2s including Base, Abstract, Linera, and MegaETH are booming as ETH remains deflationary post-Merge with L2 growth accelerating.
This long-term vision, dubbed the "Strawmap," outlines seven planned hard forks through 2029 to systematically rebuild Ethereum's architecture. A key goal is slashing transaction finality time from roughly 16 minutes to as low as 6-16 seconds, making the base layer more competitive with traditional financial systems. The push for quantum resistance targets four specific areas identified by Vitalik Buterin as vulnerable to future quantum computing attacks, including consensus-layer signatures (BLS) and user account signatures (ECDSA). The proposed solution involves transitioning to quantum-resistant alternatives like hash-based signatures, though these are currently much more resource-intensive, costing around 200,000 gas to verify compared to 3,000 for current methods. A dedicated team, the "Privacy Stewards of Ethereum," is spearheading privacy initiatives. Their roadmap focuses on three core areas: private writes (making private transactions as cheap as public ones), private reads (accessing blockchain data without revealing your identity), and private proving to make zero-knowledge proof generation more accessible. The deflationary pressure on ETH's supply is a direct result of the "Merge" to Proof-of-Stake and the EIP-1559 update. The EIP-1559 protocol burns a portion of transaction fees; when network activity is high enough, this burn rate can exceed the new ETH issued to validators, resulting in a net reduction of the total supply. In the year following the Merge, for instance, Ethereum's net supply decreased by about 300,000 ETH. Layer-2 networks are increasingly becoming the primary execution layer for users, handling the majority of transaction activity in the Ethereum ecosystem. This structural shift positions the main Ethereum blockchain (L1) as a core settlement and security layer, while L2s provide the scalability for applications like gaming and social media. The mentioned L2s are each pushing unique boundaries. MegaETH, for instance, launched its mainnet in February 2026 after stress tests reportedly reached 35,000 transactions per second. Abstract, developed by the creators of Pudgy Penguins, launched in January 2025 with a focus on consumer-friendly applications like gaming and social platforms. Meanwhile, Base announced a transition away from Optimism's OP Stack to its own unified software architecture to increase autonomy.
