Key Highlights
- The 2029 Roadmap: Justin Drake’s “Strawmap,” released February 25, 2026, outlines seven forks to finalize Ethereum’s L1.
- Vitalik’s Speed Boost: Vitalik Buterin supports cutting slot times (12s → 2s) and using Minimmit for near 1-second finality.
- Massive L1 Scaling: Targets include 10,000 TPS (Gigagas) and post-quantum security, moving Ethereum toward a secure, private “global computer.”
Ethereum Foundation (EF) researcher Justin Drake has released a detailed “strawmap,” a strawman roadmap presenting a potential sequence of Layer 1 (L1) protocol upgrades through 2029.
The roadmap, intended for developers, researchers, and participants in Ethereum governance, envisions roughly seven forks over the next several years, assuming a cadence of one upgrade every six months.
Drake introduced the roadmap on X, stating: “Introducing strawmap, a strawman roadmap by EF Protocol. Believe in something. Believe in an Ethereum strawmap.”
The document is explicitly described as a work-in-progress. Drake emphasized that it is not a prediction but a coordination tool, offering one coherent path among many possible futures for Ethereum L1. It is intended to provide a framework for discussion and planning among Ethereum developers and researchers.
Five long-term goals
The strawmap highlights five main long-term targets, referred to as “north stars”:
- Fast L1: Reduce slot times and achieve block finality within seconds.
- Gigagas L1: Reach a throughput of 1 gigagas per second (about 10,000 transactions per second) using zkEVMs and real-time proving.
- Teragas L2: Deliver 1 gigabyte per second throughput (around 10 million transactions per second) through data availability sampling to scale Layer 2 networks.
- Post-Quantum L1: Implement hash-based cryptography that can resist quantum computing attacks.
- Private L1: Provide native privacy through shielded ETH transactions.
The roadmap places these objectives visually on the right side of the diagram as black boxes. Drake explained that the “strawmap” name combines “strawman” and “roadmap,” signaling both the preliminary nature of the plan and the difficulty of producing an “official” roadmap in a highly decentralized ecosystem.
Timeline and structure
The roadmap separates planned forks into three layers: consensus (CL), data (DL), and execution (EL). Key upgrades, referred to as “headliners,” are highlighted in dark boxes, while off-chain improvements appear in grey.
Arrows show technical dependencies, and underlined text links to the relevant Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) or supporting documents.
Upcoming consensus layer forks are named using a letter-based system. Some have finalized names, such as Glamsterdam and Hegotá, while others, like I* and J*, are still placeholders.
Each fork typically includes one consensus and one execution headliner, though some exceptional forks may have two, depending on the scope of improvements.
Drake noted that the strawmap focuses on a longer time horizon than typical Ethereum coverage such as All Core Devs (ACD) or forkcast.org, which usually consider only the next few forks. The roadmap is intended as a living document, updated at least quarterly, and maintained by the EF Architecture team.
Vitalik Buterin on fast slots and finality
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commented on the roadmap, highlighting the first north star: faster slots and finality. He described an incremental approach to reducing slot time:
“I like the ‘sqrt(2) at a time’ formula (12 -> 8 -> 6 -> 4 -> 3 -> 2, though the last two steps are more speculative and depend on heavy research). It is possible to go faster or slower here; but the high level is that we’ll view the slot time as a parameter that we adjust down when we’re confident it’s safe to, similar to the blob target.”
Buterin explained that while fast slots operate mostly independently of other roadmap elements, there are intersections with peer-to-peer block propagation. Vitalik Buterin pointed to ongoing work by Ethereum researcher @raulvk on a redesigned peer-to-peer network layer that uses erasure coding.
Instead of sending full blocks to every node, blocks are split into multiple pieces, so nodes can reconstruct them from only part of the data. This method reduces network load and speeds up block propagation while keeping redundancy intact.
Buterin also noted that fast slot improvements interact with more complex slot structures introduced by ePBS, FOCIL, and the fast confirmation rule. These structures reduce the maximum safe latency for blocks. To address this, the team is testing a system where only a randomly selected subset of 256–1024 attesters sign each slot, which could remove the need for an aggregation phase and allow slots to be shorter.
On finality, Buterin outlined a transition to a one-round BFT algorithm called Minimmit. Current finality averages 16 minutes; the roadmap targets eventual finality times between 6 and 16 seconds, with potential further reductions:
“One interesting consequence of the incremental approach is that there is a pathway to making the slots quantum-resistant much sooner than making the finality quantum-resistant, so we may well quite quickly get to a regime where, if quantum computers suddenly appear, we lose the finality guarantee, but the chain keeps chugging along.”
Quantum-resistant and formal verification initiatives
The roadmap also anticipates upgrades to post-quantum hash-based signatures and STARK-friendly hash functions, alongside incremental modifications to Ethereum’s slot structure and consensus mechanisms.
These changes aim to provide a cleaner, simpler, and formally verifiable system, while maintaining backward compatibility where possible.
Experts say the strawmap shows Ethereum researchers’ plans to increase L1 transaction capacity, speed up finality, and address future risks such as quantum computing. It also illustrates the difficulty of maintaining decentralization and security while improving performance in a complex blockchain network.
Also Read: Vitalik Buterin: DeFi Is Central to Ethereum’s Long-Term Mission
