Major Changes and Updates Are Coming to Ethereum: Vitalik Buterin Explains

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that the network’s roadmap, originally set out in 2023, has changed significantly, with quantum security, user privacy, native rollups, and a leaner protocol architecture becoming priority areas in this new era.

Buterin stated that he compared the 2023 Ethereum roadmap with the current “Strawmap” and found that while a significant portion of the core goals remained the same, the order of some topics had changed, and some technologies had been replaced with better alternatives.

Accordingly, security against quantum computers gained higher priority, while VDFs and some EVM improvements were relegated to the background. The replacement of Verkle trees with a “unified BT” and then a “PBT” approach, and the transformation of the state expiry concept into a new “state types” architecture, were highlighted as significant changes in the roadmap.

According to Buterin, the most significant change is the inclusion of some new technologies in Ethereum’s long-term plans that were not present in the 2023 roadmap at all.

At the forefront of these areas is strong user privacy. Buterin noted that Ethereum developers are working on keyed nonce and recent roots mechanisms, some components of FOCIL, lean privacy pools, and structures called “wormholes,” indicating that privacy is now one of the issues directly prioritized at the protocol level.

Scaling efforts for the post-quantum era also stand out as an important part of the new roadmap. On the Ethereum side, leanSPHINCS-based post-quantum signatures, signature aggregation, and new structures called “zkzk frames” are being evaluated. The aim is to make Ethereum resilient in the long term against the risks that quantum computers may pose to existing cryptographic signature systems.

Ethereum also aims to increase the use of “formal verification” by simplifying its protocol specification. Buterin stated that formally verifying the entire protocol has become more feasible thanks to modern AI tools, and that AI-powered formal verification systems could play a fundamental role in Ethereum’s technical future.

The new roadmap also includes mechanisms not yet on the agenda for 2023, such as “blob futures” and “gas futures.” In addition, advancements in SNARK technologies have made it possible to consider native rollups as a direct part of the Ethereum protocol.

Buterin also noted that a clearer design space has emerged regarding the long-term future of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). He stated that the zkzk frames structure might necessitate the protocol offering users an instruction set architecture (ISA) other than the EVM, and that leanISA and RISC-V are currently leading candidates.

Buterin stated that these architectures are simpler, more modern, and more efficient compared to EVM, and that in the future, EVM could be transformed from a complex structure directly embedded in the underlying protocol into an intermediate representation layer running on a lower-level ISA. However, he added that work on this is still in its very early stages.

Ethereum’s scaling approach is also undergoing a significant paradigm shift. According to Buterin, the goal is no longer to scale all network activities to the maximum extent using the same method. Instead, specialized mechanisms are being developed for heavily used transaction types such as token transfers, decentralized exchange transactions, and privacy protocols expected to become widespread in the future, providing more limited but much higher scalability.

Buterin stated that STARK technologies and AI-powered formal verification systems are now considered “first-class” components in Ethereum’s technical future. He noted that recursive STARK structures are planned for use across multiple layers of the protocol, and that the same verification primitive could be used in three different layers: the execution layer (EL), the consensus layer (CL), and the data layer (DL).

The Ethereum co-founder argued that securely implementing such critical cryptographic structures is only possible through formal verification, and that modern AI tools have made this process feasible.

Buterin summarized Ethereum’s long-term goals under the headings of quantum security, user privacy, censorship resistance, high security, and scalability.

“Ethereum will be quantum safe. ETH will prioritize user privacy. Ethereum will be secure, censorship-resistant, high-performing, and scalable. And Ethereum will be lean,” he stated.

*This is not investment advice.