Ethereum's Strawmap: Every Major Change in Vitalik Buterin's 2026 Roadmap vs. the 2023 Plan

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a major update to the network's development roadmap on August 10, 2026 — a document known as the "Strawmap" — that fundamentally reorients the protocol's priorities compared to the 2023 roadmap . The changes are sweeping: five quantified north stars replace the old six-pillar structure, quantum resistance jumps from a research track to an urgent redesign, privacy becomes a first-class protocol requirement, and several long-awaited technologies like Verkle trees are abandoned in favor of newer designs. All of this comes alongside the deepest restructuring in Ethereum Foundation history, including a 20% workforce cut and a 40% budget reduction . This article breaks down every major change.

Five "North Stars" Replaced the Old Six-Category Structure

The 2023 roadmap was organized around six loosely sketched pillars: The Merge, The Surge, The Scourge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. The Strawmap replaces that with five quantified, outcome-oriented north stars to be achieved by the end of the decade :

• Fast L1 – sub-second finality on the base layer
• Gigagas L1 – 10,000 TPS on Layer 1
• Teragas L2 – ~10 million TPS across rollups
• Post-Quantum L1 – full quantum-safe cryptography as a core protocol property
• Private L1 – strong privacy as a core protocol requirement

These north stars are not vague aspirations; the roadmap ties specific upgrade forks and cryptographic milestones to each one .

Seven Network Upgrades Through 2029

The Strawmap sketches approximately seven hard forks at a pace of roughly one every six months, from 2026 through 2029 :

Upgrade	Target Period	Headliner Features
Fusaka	Shipped Dec 3, 2025	PeerDAS, EOF, EIP-7702
Glamsterdam	Q4 2026	ePBS (EIP-7732), gas limit increases targeting a post-fork floor of 200 million, L1 scaling runway
Hegotá	2027	FOCIL for censorship resistance, binary state tree migration (EIP-7864)
(4 unnamed forks)	2027–2029	Quantum cryptography activation, native rollups, privacy primitives, potential EVM replacement

The exact names and dates for forks beyond Hegotá remain fluid, with the Ethereum Foundation describing the Strawmap as a "sketch" rather than a fixed schedule .

Specific Quantum-Computing Defenses

Quantum resistance moved from a "watch and research" item in 2023 to an urgent top priority, with Buterin explicitly stating that "quantum safety has shifted up a LOT in priority" . The Strawmap names three concrete cryptographic schemes to replace every existing elliptic-curve signature (ECDSA, BLS) with post-quantum alternatives :

• leanXMSS – for attestation signatures on the consensus layer
• leanSPHINCS – for transaction signatures on the execution layer
• leanDA – for data availability sampling

This requires a full cryptographic redesign across both the protocol and rollup data storage, with core infrastructure milestones targeting completion by approximately 2029 . Buterin proposed EIP-8288 in June 2026 to specify the post-quantum signature framework .

Privacy Upgrades

Strong privacy became a "core requirement" rather than a peripheral concern — what Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation now call a "first-class" protocol goal . The Strawmap integrates privacy mechanisms directly into Layer 1, including built-in stealth addresses, privacy-preserving transaction pools ("privacy pools"), and protocol-level support for private transfers via designs like "wormholes" that let users move value without exposing their full transaction history .

As part of the broader restructuring, the Ethereum Foundation shut down the separate Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) lab in June 2026, folding that work into core protocol development .

Rollup Targets: Native Rollups Are a New Addition Since 2023

"Native rollups" did not exist in the 2023 roadmap and are a significant new addition . The Strawmap envisions rollups that are no longer separate L2 projects run by third-party teams, but protocol-enforced execution environments. This enables the Teragas L2 target of ~10 million TPS across the rollup ecosystem . Native rollups tighten trust-minimization between L1 and L2 and reduce reliance on external sequencers. Buterin noted that SNARK technology was "nowhere near mature enough to even consider this back in 2023" .

Deprioritized Items

Several high-profile 2023 roadmap items were deprioritized or removed entirely :

• Verkle trees – The long-planned statelessness enabler is being replaced by a binary state tree migration (EIP-7864) . Verkle trees are no longer in the critical path for Ethereum's scaling future.
• State expiry – Automatic state rent and history expiry schemes were deprioritized in favor of binary-tree stateless proofs .
• VDFs (Verifiable Delay Functions) – Previously part of "The Splurge" category; now dropped as an active priority .
• Multi-prover ZK assumptions – The old roadmap relied on proofs from multiple provers requiring a majority to be honest (a 3-of-5 model). The Strawmap moves to a single-prover model with recursive STARKs, mathematically guaranteeing correctness rather than aggregating trust .

Beyond the EVM: leanISA and RISC-V

The Strawmap explicitly plans for a future beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) . Two candidates are being explored to replace or supplement the EVM as the execution environment:

• leanISA – A minimal, formally verifiable instruction-set architecture designed specifically for Ethereum
• RISC-V – An open-standard ISA that could let Ethereum leverage decades of hardware and compiler optimization

A binary state tree overhaul (EIP-7864) is seen as a prerequisite for any EVM replacement, since the current Patricia-Merkle trie structure limits execution-layer innovation . Buterin has described his ideal end state as reducing the EVM to a compile-target feature, with the protocol layer only directly seeing RISC-V or leanISA, though he emphasized this step is "still far away" .

Recursive STARKs and AI-Assisted Formal Verification

The 2023 roadmap treated ZK proofs as one option among several. The Strawmap makes recursive STARKs the single trust mechanism: instead of every node re-executing every transaction, a node verifies a compact recursive proof that the computation was done correctly . Buterin described this as making recursive STARKs "an enshrined first-class core component of the protocol" .

AI-assisted formal verification is a brand-new addition since 2023 . The Strawmap explicitly calls for using modern AI tools to formally verify protocol code and cryptographic implementations, addressing the historic bottleneck where formal verification was too slow and expensive for fast-moving protocol development. Buterin stated that full formal verification of everything is "only possible because of modern AI" .

Organizational Context: EF Restructuring and Budget Cuts

The Strawmap does not exist in isolation. On June 23, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation announced its deepest restructuring ever :

• 54 employees laid off, roughly 20% of the approximately 270-person workforce
• 40% budget reduction announced by Vitalik Buterin, shifting toward a long-term endowment model targeting 5% annual spending of treasury assets by 2030
• Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) lab shut down
• Five-cluster operational structure replacing the previous model, organized around: Protocol Layer, Access Layer, User Layer, Community Layer, and Institutional Layer
• CROPS mandate – the foundation narrowed its mandate to censorship resistance, resilience, openness, privacy, and security, deprioritizing broader ecosystem grants and educational initiatives

The restructuring was presented as a months-long process tied to the EF's updated Mandate (published March 2026) and Treasury Management Policy (adopted June 2025), aimed at making the organization leaner and more focused as the protocol enters its most aggressive upgrade cycle since The Merge .