Ethereum’s future roadmap receives major updates! According to a recent post by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on X, the latest Ethereum roadmap, “Strawmap,” shows significant shifts in priorities compared to the 2023 version. In addition to greatly accelerating quantum safety, the update introduces entirely new initiatives such as “strong privacy” and AI-accelerated formal verification, revealing Ethereum’s path toward a streamlined, secure, and highly scalable future.
(Prior context: Encrypted messaging app Signal is developing phone-free registration! Vitalik praises it but warns: It can't stop AI-driven big data doxxing—pseudo-anonymity is dead.)
(Background supplement: Vitalik analyzes the cryptography holy grail Diamond iO: a planetary protocol that makes smart contracts “completely invisible”)
In the rapidly evolving wave of blockchain technology, the future direction of Ethereum has always been the focus of the entire market. On August 10, Taipei time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a detailed technical reflection on X (formerly Twitter), deeply comparing the well-known "Six-Phase" roadmap from 2023 (The Merge, Surge, etc.) with the latest "Strawmap" extending beyond 2029, revealing significant shifts in strategic priorities by Ethereum’s core development team.
I updated my 2023 roadmap diagram to overlay where the items from that list currently sit on the Strawmap (https://t.co/9deLIQWG24).
In general, a lot of overlap, but:
Some items have been reordered (e.g., quantum safety has been prioritized higher).
* Some things deprioritized (e.g., pic.twitter.com/XLdIt4kAgT— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 10, 2026
Quantum resistance prioritized; enhanced privacy introduced as a top-tier objective for the first time
Based on Vitalik's post, although the two versions of the roadmap remain highly overlapping in most areas, several key areas have been reordered and adjusted. One of the most notable changes is the significant prioritization of "quantum safety" in response to future computational threats; in contrast, VDFs (Verifiable Delay Functions) and many EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) improvements have been deprioritized, with some older proposals (such as State expiry) being replaced by more promising "new state types."
More notably, the 2026 version of Strawmap introduces several entirely new items that did not exist in 2023. Leading the list is the "Strong privacy" architecture, categorized as a top-priority item, reflecting a sharp increase in the ecosystem’s emphasis on user data protection. Additionally, the roadmap now includes "Radical scaling for the post-quantum era," "Blob and gas futures," and "Native rollups," made possible by the maturation of SNARKs technology.
Heavily betting on STARKs and AI-accelerated proof verification
On the technological frontier, Vitalik highlights a crucial common theme: Ethereum’s future scaling strategy is no longer about blindly maximizing throughput for all on-chain activity, but rather about building specialized mechanisms with stricter properties optimized for high-load activities such as token transfers and privacy protocols.
To realize this vision, the Ethereum team is betting the protocol’s technical future on “STARKs” and “modern AI-augmented formal verification (FV).” Vitalik explains that recursive STARKs technology will appear across multiple protocol layers—including the consensus layer, data layer, and execution layer—and this deep architectural integration can only ensure absolute system security and further drive the “lean-ification” of protocol specifications through modern AI tools enabling thorough formal verification.
The Future of EVM: Open Architecture and Simplicity
Beyond upgrades to the underlying technology, the design space of the EVM itself will open up. Vitalik revealed that future protocols may expose non-EVM instruction set architectures (ISAs) to users, such as more modern and efficient leanISA or RISC-V. This means the EVM could evolve into an intermediate representation (IR) running on top of these architectures, rather than remaining a built-in底层 feature.
Ethereum will be quantum-safe, privacy-first, secure, censorship-resistant, high-performance, scalable, and lean,” Vitalik poignantly concluded, emphasizing that this blueprint is not just a technological evolution, but the culmination of years of relentless effort by countless Ethereum researchers and developers.
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