Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined sweeping changes to the network’s core consensus design following the release of the Ethereum Foundation’s new ‘strawmap’, a long-term technical roadmap aimed at accelerating layer 1 upgrades through the end of the decade.
Summary
- Vitalik Buterin outlined plans to reduce Ethereum closing times from 12 seconds to just 2 seconds, with finality potentially dropping to 6 to 16 seconds.
- The Ethereum Foundation’s ‘strawmap’ outlines seven forks through 2029, focused on faster UX, gigagas throughput, post-quantum security and privacy.
- Upgrades include erasure-encrypted P2P networks, reduced numbers of attesters, Minimmit-based finality, and eventual quantum-resistant cryptography.
Vitalik Buterin explains the vision of Ethereum Strawmap
In a detailed afterButerin went through one of the roadmap’s central objectives: ‘fast L1’, which aims to gradually shorten slot times and dramatically reduce finality. Ethereum’s current average finality is approximately 16 minutes.
Under the proposed trajectory, slot times could gradually drop from 12 seconds to just 2 seconds, while finality could shrink to between 6 and 16 seconds using a single-round BFT-like algorithm known as Minimmit.
Buterin emphasized that the reduction in slot time would take place incrementally, possibly according to a ‘sqrt(2) at a time’ formula, and only if proven to be safe. Key factors include peer-to-peer network upgrades that use erasure coding to improve block propagation efficiency, as well as architectural adjustments that reduce the overhead of signature aggregation by limiting the number of attesters per slot.
The straw cardintroduced by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, presents five long-term “north stars”: fast L1, gigagas L1 throughput, tegas L2 scaling, post-quantum security, and native privacy. It includes seven expected forks through 2029, with upgrades grouped across consensus, data, and execution layers.
Buterin noted that many of the most invasive changes, including quantum-resistant hash-based signatures, could be bundled into a gradual replacement of Ethereum’s Ship of Theseus-style consensus system.
While the document is described as a coordination tool rather than an official roadmap, it signals a push toward faster user experience, stronger cryptography, and end-to-end formal authentication.
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