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A newly updated roadmap outlines how Ethereum’s multi-year transformation aims to overhaul nearly every core component of the protocol, with quantum security and privacy now elevated as top priorities. The update comes as ether has climbed more than 12% over the past week.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared fresh insights on “Lean Ethereum,” a long-term initiative to redesign most of the network following recent research discussions.

He described this effort as Ethereum’s third major phase, following the 2022 The Merge, which transitioned the network from proof-of-work mining to a proof-of-stake model. The new plan envisions replacing nearly all major protocol components over the next three to four years, while minimizing disruption to existing applications.

Originally introduced in July 2025, Lean Ethereum serves as a technical blueprint for the network’s evolution over the next decade, emphasizing the adoption of more advanced cryptographic systems than those currently in use.

Buterin’s latest update, accompanied by a revised internal roadmap referred to as a “strawmap,” provides deeper insight into shifting priorities and the project’s direction.

One major change is the increased urgency around quantum resistance. While practical quantum threats remain years away, prevailing theories suggest sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually compromise existing blockchain cryptography. Ethereum is now prioritizing the transition to quantum-safe systems across all vulnerable components, including redesigning low-cost data storage used by rollups.

Privacy has also been elevated to what Buterin called a “first-class goal.” The plan proposes building core infrastructure that natively supports private, intermediary-free transactions by default, rather than treating privacy as an add-on.

Another fundamental shift involves how the network verifies transactions. Instead of requiring every node to reprocess each transaction, Ethereum plans to adopt recursive STARKs, a cryptographic proof system that allows nodes to validate compact proofs of computation rather than executing the work themselves. This approach is expected to improve efficiency and reduce resource demands.

The most disruptive proposed change relates to Ethereum’s “state,” which represents the network’s complete record of account balances and smart contract data at any given moment.

Every transaction updates this state—adjusting balances, ownership records, and contract data. Currently, each node must store and maintain the full state to validate activity. As usage grows, this expanding data burden increases operational costs and risks centralizing the network among larger operators.

To address this, Lean Ethereum proposes maintaining the existing flexible “dynamic” state but limiting its growth, while introducing new, more efficient state types that scale at a lower cost. This hybrid approach could allow total data capacity to expand from roughly 2 terabytes today to over 100 terabytes by 2030, without requiring every node to store everything in the traditional way.

The roadmap also suggests Ethereum may eventually move beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the system that executes smart contracts. One potential successor is the open architecture RISC-V. Buterin indicated a preference for keeping the EVM as a higher-level interface while shifting the protocol’s core execution layer to a simpler foundation, though this remains a longer-term consideration.

Across the roadmap, Ethereum is expected to steadily increase capacity, with higher transaction throughput, expanded data limits, and shorter block times over the next five years.

Buterin highlighted a significant capacity boost expected in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, adding that the subsequent Hegotá upgrade could be the final major fork before the Lean Ethereum phase fully begins.

Overall, the roadmap reflects a long-term commitment to advancing quantum security and privacy ahead of broader industry urgency. The update arrives as ether trades around $1,777, marking one of the strongest weekly performances among major cryptocurrencies.