Ethereum’s “Strawmap” working draft sets out a multi-year overhaul that would push the network toward transaction finality measured in seconds, raise base-layer processing capacity by roughly 200 times, and expand the data pipeline used by Layer 2 networks. The plan, developed from Justin Drake’s July 2025 “Lean Ethereum” proposal and revised as recently as June 26, maps potential upgrades from the Glamsterdam hard fork in the second half of 2026 through 2029.
The draft groups the work around five targets: faster Layer 1 finality, higher Layer 1 throughput, larger Blob data capacity for rollups, quantum-resistant cryptography, and native privacy features. It remains a research and implementation roadmap rather than a locked protocol schedule, leaving individual upgrade contents dependent on testing, audits and developer agreement.
Finality target moves from minutes to seconds
Ethereum currently reaches economic finality in roughly 15 minutes, a result of its validator voting design. The network has about 880,000 validators, according to the Strawmap draft, and divides them into 32 committees because collecting and processing every validator’s signature on every block would create too much network overhead.
The proposed redesign would use zero-knowledge proofs to aggregate validator votes. Instead of sending and verifying an enormous collection of individual signatures, the network could verify a compact proof showing that the required validator votes had been made correctly.
That approach is intended to allow all validators to participate in the consensus process for each block, opening a path toward single-round finality. A block would become final after one coordinated voting round rather than moving through multiple committee-based stages over several minutes.
The same architecture could also reshape validator participation. Strawmap proposes reducing the minimum stake to run an Ethereum validator from 32 ETH to 1 ETH. Lowering the threshold would give smaller holders a direct route to participate in staking, although operating a validator would still require technical infrastructure and reliable uptime.
The roadmap also proposes shorter block times. Ethereum’s current block interval is around 12 seconds. The draft sketches an intermediate shift to six-second blocks in 2027 or 2028, followed by four-second blocks in 2029 or 2030 alongside a redesigned peer-to-peer networking system.
Faster blocks and faster finality would reduce the time users, wallets and applications wait before treating a transaction as settled. They would also put greater pressure on network propagation, since block data would need to move reliably across a global set of nodes within much narrower time windows.
ZK-EVM design targets 1 billion gas per second
For execution capacity, Strawmap sets a goal of increasing Ethereum Layer 1 from about 5 million gas per second to 1 billion gas per second. Gas is Ethereum’s measure of computational work, making the target a roughly 200-fold increase in capacity under the draft’s assumptions.
The central technical change is an L1 ZK-EVM, a system in which block producers provide a zero-knowledge proof that a block’s transactions were executed correctly. Nodes could then check that proof instead of independently re-executing every transaction in the block.
Ethereum’s existing model relies heavily on re-execution: nodes process transactions themselves to confirm that a proposed state change is valid. That design provides strong verification properties but makes larger blocks progressively more demanding for node operators.
Strawmap proposes a phased transition. Early versions would retain conventional re-execution while allowing optional ZK proofs. The draft then places a move toward mandatory proofs in the 2028–2029 period. If the proof system works as intended, node verification costs would no longer rise directly with block size in the same way, supporting much larger gas limits.
The roadmap’s execution target would mark a substantial shift in Ethereum’s scaling strategy. Rollups would remain central to lower-cost transaction activity, yet the base layer would also seek a much higher capacity ceiling rather than relying mainly on Layer 2 networks to absorb demand.
Blob expansion remains central to Layer 2 scaling
The roadmap places equal weight on increasing Blob data capacity, the specialized data space Ethereum uses for rollups to publish transaction information. Aggregate Layer 2 throughput is constrained by how much of that data Ethereum can accept and distribute.
Strawmap describes a longer-term objective of 1 GB per second of Blob data bandwidth. The document compares that level of capacity with transmitting data roughly comparable to a high-definition video every few seconds.
PeerDAS, scheduled for the Fusaka hard fork in December 2025, is presented as an early building block. Data availability sampling allows nodes to verify portions of Blob data rather than requiring every node to download and check every Blob in full. That reduces the burden of supporting larger Blob counts while retaining confidence that the data is available.
Glamsterdam candidates include further work on Blob transmission and storage efficiency, according to the draft. The upgrades would need to proceed carefully: expanding data capacity can lower costs for rollups, but it also raises demands on bandwidth, storage and networking hardware for the entities supporting the chain.
Post-quantum migration is placed before 2030
Strawmap treats quantum resistance as a separate protocol priority. Ethereum wallets currently use ECDSA signatures, while validators use BLS signatures. Both are based on cryptographic assumptions that could be threatened by sufficiently capable quantum computers.
The roadmap references guidance from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology that calls for ECDSA to begin being phased out from 2030 and to be fully disallowed by 2035. The draft proposes a multi-fork migration to hash-based cryptography, with a target of completing a hash-based Layer 1 signature system by 2029.
The document also says a post-quantum research team was formed in January 2026 and that a $1 million reward was established to test the security of relevant hash functions. A migration of this scale would affect wallets, validator software and Ethereum’s account model, making it one of the roadmap’s most technically sensitive projects.
Privacy plan has fewer implementation details
Native privacy is the least specified of the five targets. The draft proposes shielded Layer 1 transfers using zero-knowledge proofs, allowing a transaction to demonstrate compliance with protocol rules without publicly exposing all transaction details.
Ethereum transactions and balances are currently visible through public addresses. Shielded transfers could conceal details such as amounts or counterparties, depending on the final design. Strawmap suggests early privacy infrastructure could appear as soon as the Hegotá hard fork, followed by encrypted transaction contents in the public mempool before transactions are included on-chain.
The proposal acknowledges that privacy features will depend on technical choices and regulatory conditions. The open questions are substantial, including how wallets present shielded activity, how the system handles compliance expectations across jurisdictions, and how private transaction flows interact with Ethereum’s existing public smart contracts.
Glamsterdam’s move from the first half of 2026 to the second half underlines the uncertainty built into the timetable. Yet the Strawmap draft gives Ethereum’s disparate research priorities a single sequence: first improve the network’s ability to finalize and verify blocks, then use that foundation to increase execution and data capacity while preparing its cryptography and transaction layer for longer-term security and privacy demands.
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