Ethereum Roadmap 2026: Privacy, Quantum Security, and Native Rollups

Original author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published an overlay comparing his 2023 technology roadmap with the current Strawmap on August 10. He noted that overall alignment is high, but some items have had their priorities increased (e.g., quantum security), others decreased (e.g., VDFs, multiple EVM improvements), and some solutions have been replaced by superior alternatives (e.g., Verkle trees were first superseded by unified binary trees, then by PBTs; state expiry has been replaced by a new state type).

The current roadmap introduces several entirely new directions not addressed in 2023, reflecting shifted priorities: strong privacy protection has been elevated to a top-tier focus; aggressive scaling is being advanced in a post-quantum context; the protocol specification is being streamlined to facilitate formal verification, as the emergence of AI now makes full formal verification of the entire protocol feasible; block and gas futures are being introduced; native Rollups are being added (previously, SNARK technology was not sufficiently mature); and greater design flexibility is being opened for "the future of EVM," with the protocol potentially offering users non-EVM instruction set architectures in the future.

The most notable change is strong privacy protection, which was not covered in the 2023 roadmap; Strawmap has now elevated privacy L1 to a protocol-level priority. Vitalik’s highlighted solutions—keyed nonces, recent roots, streamlined privacy pools, and wormholes—address concurrent private transactions, proof verification, shared anonymity sets, and fund linkage, respectively.

EIP-8250, submitted in April, enables a shared sending address to use multiple independent nonce sets, preventing one user’s pending transactions from blocking others within the same privacy protocol. EIP-8272, submitted in May, allows private spend proofs to reference recent commitment tree roots without requiring the verification of continuously changing application state. EIP-8182 proposes an on-protocol privacy pool for ETH and ERC-20 tokens through a system contract, a shared shielded pool, and a separated proof architecture. EIP-8250 and EIP-8272 are currently in Draft status, while EIP-8182 is in Review; none have a scheduled activation fork.

Currently, various privacy applications maintain separate liquidity pools, resulting in fragmented users and liquidity, which can lead to overly small anonymity sets within individual pools. EIP-8182 aims to consolidate multiple assets into a single protocol with a unified anonymity set, and enhance it with a scalable authorization verification mechanism to introduce new verification methods, reducing the need to split users during upgrades.

Wormholes implements zero-knowledge destruction proofs according to EIP-7503: users first transfer ETH to a cryptographically unspendable address, then use zero-knowledge proofs to mint an equivalent amount of ETH, making it difficult for the public chain to link the original transfer with the new address. This proposal is currently stagnant, with specifications and reference implementations still needing refinement, alongside risks of implementation errors and double minting. Privacy as a tier-one goal on the roadmap signifies that Ethereum is beginning to simultaneously overhaul accounts, transaction validation, and base-layer transfers—but significant protocol and wallet work remains before default private accounts become a reality.

Vitalik has elevated quantum security to a higher priority and proposed continuing scalability under post-quantum conditions. The risk distribution includes ECDSA signatures used by ordinary accounts, BLS signatures used by validators, KZG commitments for blob data availability, and zero-knowledge proof systems adopted by some rollups and privacy applications. Current quantum computers are not yet capable of breaking these cryptographic systems, but replacing account and validator keys across the global network will require years of preparation.

The latest roadmap outlines directions such as leanSPHINCS signature aggregation and zkzk frames, and places recursive STARKs for joint use across the execution, consensus, and data layers. STARKs primarily rely on hash functions, allowing them to avoid certain quantum risks associated with elliptic curve cryptography, while also compressing large amounts of computation into easily verifiable proofs. The Ethereum Foundation has established a dedicated post-quantum team, with the current timeline estimating that L1 protocol upgrades may be completed by 2029; a full migration of the execution layer could take several additional years, with no fixed completion date.

STARK is also linked to protocol minimization and formal verification. Vitalik’s July proposal for an Extremely Lean Chain aims to compress the state of a single validator in Phase 1 to 6 bytes, and further reduce it to 1 byte in Phase 2, enabling validators to update balances and rotate public keys daily via zero-knowledge proofs. Vitalik believes modern AI tools make full protocol formal verification feasible, where AI is used to write and verify mathematical proofs machine-checkable—without participating in block production, voting, or consensus decisions.

EIP-8079, submitted in November 2025, proposes a draft for native Rollups, enabling Ethereum to expose its mainnet state transition function to the execution layer via an EXECUTE precompile, allowing EVM-equivalent Rollups to reuse L1’s verification infrastructure. Currently, Rollups must independently maintain their proof systems, bridge contracts, and upgrade mechanisms; native integration would reduce the need for custom verification code and create conditions for eliminating the security committee. Proofs, ZK verification, and certain security designs in EIP-8079 remain marked as incomplete and have not been included in any finalized mainnet upgrades.

In March, the Ethereum Foundation provided further clarification on the division of labor between L1 and L2, stating that L2s aiming to maximize inheritance of mainnet security should transition to native rollups, Stage 2, and synchronous composability; L2s offering privacy, application-specific efficiency, or other differentiated features will continue to exist. The roadmap for native rollups adjusts the verification relationship between L2 and the mainnet without eliminating the multi-chain scaling structure.

The state design is also being updated: Vitalik has proposed that Verkle trees be first replaced by unified binary trees, then transition to partitioned binary trees (PBT), while state expiry gives way to a new state type. EIP-8347, submitted in July, has proposed offline migration to PBT, but the activation fork and anchor block have yet to be determined. Blob and gas futures, as well as non-EVM instruction sets such as leanISA or RISC-V, are also under long-term discussion, with deeper EVM modifications not yet mature enough to be included in the Strawmap.

Strawmap has temporarily mapped out seven potential upgrades through 2029, spaced approximately every six months. In May, the Ethereum Foundation disclosed that core developers consider the annual labeling of forks beyond 2026 to be overly definitive, and future plans may de-emphasize this approach.

This update from Vitalik highlights a shift in Ethereum's technical priorities, with privacy, post-quantum security, and formal verification being integrated into the core protocol design, while native Rollups and new state types advance the scalability discussion toward verification mechanisms and state structures. Several of these proposals are still in draft, review, or early research stages; Strawmap outlines dependencies and long-term direction but should not be interpreted as direct commitments to deployment.

Whether the relevant EIPs can be included in specific hard forks, whether the post-quantum account and validator migration方案 can form a complete specification, and whether the native Rollup’s proof-carrying transactions and ZK verification design can be completed. The近期 observation points remain the fourth quarter of 2026 (Glamsterdam) and Hegotá in 2027, whose proposal scope is still being determined.