On February 26th, the Ethereum Foundation released a new technical roadmap called the “strawmap,” outlining seven major Hard Fork upgrades to the Ethereum network between now and 2029. This document quickly attracted the attention of the global blockchain community as it aims to reshape Layer 1 performance, shorten Block creation times, drastically reduce finality times, and integrate native privacy directly into the Primary Network.
Chia to researcher Justin Drake , a "strawmap" is a combination of "strawman" and "roadmap," implying it's an initial roadmap for discussion rather than a binding, formal plan. In a decentralized ecosystem like Ethereum, it's difficult to build a roadmap that fully represents all stakeholders, from core developers and validators to Layer 2 and DeFi and Non-Fungible Token projects. Therefore, strawmaps are XEM an open technical guideline, maintained and updated quarterly by the Ethereum Foundation's Architecture team.
This document originated from an internal Ethereum Foundation workshop in January 2026, and subsequently expanded into a long-term plan spanning the end of the decade. Notably, instead of focusing on a few immediate upgrades like typical All Core Devs meetings, the strawmap outlines the entire chain of technical dependencies between upgrades, ensuring the improvement process is logical and optimized.
In terms of technological goals, Justin Drake identified five “north stars”—core objectives that will guide Ethereum in the coming period. First is “fast L1,” aiming to shorten slot time to just a few seconds and achieve near-instantaneous finality. Second is “gigagas L1,” aspiring to achieve 1 gigagas per second, equivalent to approximately 10,000 transactions per second on Layer 1 through zkEVM and real-time proof-of-action mechanisms. Third is “teragas L2,” aiming for a data bandwidth of 1 GB per second, equivalent to approximately 10 million transactions per second, based on data availability sampling.
Beyond performance, Strawmap also places a strong emphasis on security and privacy. A key objective is "Post-Quantum L1," which uses hash-based cryptography to combat future quantum computing threats. Alongside this is "Private L1," which integrates shielded ETH transfers directly on Layer 1 , providing first - class privacy instead of relying entirely on external solutions.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called the strawmap a “very important” document. He said the roadmap will gradually reduce slot time from the current 12 seconds to 8 seconds, 6 seconds, 4 seconds, 3 seconds, and even 2 seconds in the future, although the final steps still require in-depth research. This is a fundamental change because slot time determines the rate at which new Block are proposed on the Ethereum network.
Beyond simply shortening Block creation time, strawmap aims to drastically reduce finality time – the period after which a Block cannot be reversed. From the current level of approximately 16 minutes, finality could be reduced to 10 minutes and 40 seconds when the slot is at 8 seconds, then further down to 6 minutes and 24 seconds, 1 minute and 12 seconds, 48 seconds, 16 seconds, and finally just 8 seconds if "aggressive" parameters are applied. If successful, this would be a major step forward, allowing Ethereum to directly compete with high-speed blockchains like Solana in terms of user experience, while maintaining decentralization and security.
Another noteworthy technical point is the transition to Hash based quantum signatures and optimization for STARK. Researchers are evaluating three options for responding to recent security issues related to Poseidon2: increasing the number of computation rounds, reverting to Poseidon1, or switching to BLAKE3. These decisions will directly impact zk-proof performance and the entire rollup ecosystem.
