Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the network’s priorities have shifted so much since 2023 that he had to redraw his own roadmap.
Key Takeaways
Vitalik Buterin compared Ethereum’s 2023 roadmap to the new 2029 Strawmap on Monday.Quantum safety and strong privacy tools now rank among Ethereum’s top upgrade priorities.AI-assisted formal verification and native rollups are new additions since 2023.Other items were dropped, including verifiable delay functions and a range of planned Ethereum Virtual Machine improvements. The EVM is the software that runs smart contracts.
Older Designs Give Way to Newer OnesSome plans were swapped for what Buterin called superior designs. Verkle trees, once meant to help nodes store less data, gave way to newer proposals. A plan to let old account data expire was replaced by new state types, a different way of organizing how the network tracks balances and activity.
Privacy and Quantum Defense Take Center Stage AI Tools Push Formal Verification Forward Rollups and Futures Markets Join the PlanButerin also raised the possibility that Ethereum could eventually expose a simpler instruction set to developers, with candidates like leanISA and RISC-V under discussion. He said that idea remains too early even for the Strawmap.
Why It Matters for Users and DevelopersButerin summed up the goal directly. Ethereum will be quantum safe, will prioritize user privacy, will remain secure and censorship resistant, and will scale while staying lean, he stressed.
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