Ethereum Foundation Unveils 'Strawmap' Roadmap to 2029
The Ethereum Foundation has published a long-term “Strawmap” outlining seven major protocol upgrades planned through 2029. Led by researcher Justin Drake, the roadmap targets ambitious goals including 1 gigagas/second throughput, native privacy, quantum resistance, and leveraging AI for protocol development. The plan signals a strategic shift toward multi-year engineering to solidify Ethereum's role as a global settlement layer.
- The "Strawmap" proposes a more predictable upgrade cycle, with roughly one fork every six months through 2029. This contrasts with the previously more varied and less predictable timelines for major Ethereum updates. The next two named upgrades on the consensus layer are slated to be Glamsterdam and Hegota in 2026. - A primary goal is a significant reduction in transaction finality time, aiming to bring it down from the current 16 minutes to as low as 6 to 16 seconds. This will be achieved alongside a decrease in slot time (the interval for new block creation) from 12 seconds to a potential 2 seconds. - The plan introduces Verkle Trees, a data structure upgrade that allows for much smaller proof sizes, which is a critical step toward enabling stateless clients. This will drastically reduce the hardware requirements for running a node, making it possible on devices like smartphones and smartwatches. - To counter the threat of centralization from Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), "The Scourge" upgrade will be implemented. This phase aims to ensure credibly neutral transaction inclusion and may involve Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) to reduce the influence of block builders. - The roadmap formalizes the move to post-quantum cryptography, identified as a "first-class protocol goal" to protect against future security threats from quantum computers. This involves transitioning away from quantum-vulnerable schemes like BLS signatures and KZG commitments to hash-based schemes and potentially STARK-based cryptography. - Layer 2 solutions are targeted for a massive throughput increase to a potential 10 million transactions per second ("Teragas") through Data Availability Sampling (DAS). This complements the Layer 1 goal of reaching 10,000 TPS by integrating a Zero-Knowledge EVM (zkEVM) directly into the protocol. - The use of AI is not just for off-chain analysis; the roadmap explicitly mentions integrating AI into the protocol development process itself, which could potentially shorten development timelines. There is also a broader push within the ecosystem to position Ethereum as a foundational layer for an economy of AI agents, with dedicated teams exploring this integration.
