Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum roadmap now puts privacy and post-quantum upgrades closer to the front
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has compared his 2023 Ethereum roadmap with the Ethereum Foundation’s latest Strawmap and says the network’s upgrade priorities have shifted in meaningful ways. Privacy protections and post-quantum security now rank higher, while some earlier items, including verifiable delay functions and several EVM-related improvements, have moved down the list. Some ideas have also been replaced by different technical paths, including a move from Verkle Tree plans toward a unified binary tree and later a segmented binary tree, while state expiry has given way to new state types. Buterin said the updated Strawmap includes several areas that were not part of his 2023 roadmap at all. Those additions include stronger privacy features, leanSPHINCS signatures and aggregation, zkzk frames for post-quantum signatures combined with STARKs, native rollups, and concepts such as blockspace and gas futures. He also said recursive STARK verification and AI-assisted formal verification are now seen as core pieces of Ethereum’s future technical base. The Strawmap, a living draft used as a reference for protocol planning rather than a fixed delivery schedule, currently extends to 2029 and was last updated on Aug. 4.
