2030: What will Ethereum look like?

Original Author: Jang Hyuk-soo

Original Compilation: Chopper, Foresight News

Launched in 2015, Ethereum has now entered its eleventh year. Along the way, it transformed its consensus mechanism from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake through The Merge, subsequently completing the Shapella, Dencun, Pectra, and Fusaka upgrades. Ethereum is in a state of continuous iteration. Whether you plan to invest in Ethereum or choose it to build applications, understanding its long-term evolution goals is crucial.

In July 2025, the day after Ethereum's tenth anniversary, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed the "Lean Ethereum" vision. "Lean" means eliminating redundant design. This roadmap consolidates Ethereum's various scattered research directions, retaining only the core necessary modules to form a unified development blueprint. Think of it like a ten-year-old house where the exterior remains unchanged, but the foundation, pipes, and wiring have all been replaced.

In February 2026, this vision materialized into a draft document called "Strawmap." As the name implies, this is merely a framework draft, not a finalized plan. The community continues to discuss, the document is constantly updated, and it was revised again on June 26th. The latest version outlines the hard forks from the Glamsterdam upgrade in the second half of 2026 through 2029, clarifying that all upgrades ultimately point to five major development goals, referred to in the text as the North Star Goals.

This article revolves around these five North Star Goals, depicting the prospect of Ethereum in 2030, four years from now.

Fast L1: Further Accelerating the Mainnet

The first North Star Goal is the speed of the Ethereum L1 network itself. Currently, Ethereum transactions require approximately 15 minutes to achieve finality, meaning the transaction result cannot be reverted. The network's approximately 880,000 validators cannot vote uniformly on every block, as collecting and processing massive signatures in one go exceeds the network's capacity. Therefore, Ethereum divides validators into 32 groups that vote in turns, requiring two complete voting cycles to reach finality.

A streamlined consensus mechanism will eliminate this bottleneck using Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK proofs). Hundreds of thousands of votes can be compressed into a short mathematical proof. All validators can participate in voting on each block, and the voting results are aggregated instantly. The ultimate goal is to achieve single-slot finality.

The block interval will also be shortened. Ethereum currently produces a block every 12 seconds. This 12-second interval is divided into three phases, each lasting 4 seconds: the block proposer broadcasts the block to the network, validators cast their votes, and the votes are aggregated.

This timing standard was set in 2020, when the Beacon Chain (Ethereum's Proof of Stake consensus layer) was primarily designed for home devices and low-speed networks. Now, with significant improvements in client software and global network infrastructure, real-world tests show that each phase takes much less time than the preset upper limit. Based on this, the plan is to reduce the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds during 2027–2028. By 2029–2030, a streamlined consensus mechanism will be implemented, coupled with a new generation of peer-to-peer communication protocols, greatly enhancing the efficiency of block and vote information propagation, further reducing the block time to 4 seconds.

With a block interval of 4 seconds, the average wait time from a user initiating a transaction to its execution will be about 2 seconds. Combined with faster finality mechanisms, the entire process from transaction initiation, execution, to irreversible finalization will be compressed to within a few seconds.

Another goal of the streamlined consensus mechanism is to lower the minimum staking threshold for validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH. Lowering the entry barrier will allow more users to directly participate in network governance. Ethereum's goal for 2030 is to be faster and more decentralized, enabling more people to participate in the consensus process.

Giga-Gas L1: Ten Billion Gas Throughput Per Second

The second North Star Goal is throughput capacity. Gas is the unit measuring computational effort on Ethereum. The current Ethereum L1 network processes about 5 million Gas per second. The long-term target is to reach 1 billion Gas per second (Giga Gas), increasing mainnet throughput by approximately 200 times.

The biggest obstacle comes from the re-execution mechanism, which is the basic verification model for blockchains. After a new block is created, thousands of nodes globally need to independently re-run all transactions within that block. It's like a student calculating an answer, and the entire class re-calculating from scratch to verify the result. This mechanism ensures the trustworthiness of the decentralized network, but it also creates a long-standing dilemma: it's hard to achieve both decentralization and high performance. To allow average people to run nodes, throughput must be limited. To increase throughput, reliance on a small number of high-performance nodes is necessary.

The technology to break this deadlock is again Zero-Knowledge Proofs. The node that packages the block simultaneously submits a mathematical proof attesting that all transactions within the block were executed correctly. Other nodes do not need to re-execute the transactions; they only need to verify the proof. The computational power required to verify a proof is extremely low, achievable even on a mobile phone. Applying this scheme to L1 block verification is the L1 ZK-EVM, for which the Ethereum Foundation published an official roadmap in February 2026.

According to the "Strawmap" plan, the first phase will run traditional re-execution and ZK proofs in parallel, with the proof mechanism being optional. Around 2028–2029, it will transition to a mandatory proof mode, where blocks are verified solely by ZK proofs. At this stage, no matter how many transactions a block contains, the verification burden on nodes will no longer increase. This provides the foundation for continuously raising the Gas limit, ultimately sprinting towards the target of 1 billion Gas per second.

For ordinary users, this means a wallet (on a phone or browser) can directly and fully verify the entire blockchain without needing to trust a third-party RPC node. Relying on this verification system, Ethereum moves from being "decentralized" to being "trustless."

Trillion-Gas L2: A High-Speed Data Channel Supporting Massive Rollups

The third North Star Goal is aimed at Layer 2 (L2) networks. L2s execute transactions outside the Ethereum mainnet, uploading only the final transaction data back to L1, thereby inheriting L1's security. The space on L1 specifically designed for storing this type of data is called a Blob. The total Blob capacity determines the upper limit of throughput for all L2 networks.

The Fusaka hard fork in December 2025 introduced PeerDAS technology, allowing nodes to verify only a portion of Blob data, laying the groundwork for massively scaling the number of Blobs. Candidate solutions for the Glamsterdam upgrade will further optimize the efficiency of Blob network transmission and storage. The "Strawmap" plans a steady yearly expansion of data carrying capacity, ultimately reaching a data bandwidth of 1 GB per second, supporting an L2 ecosystem of trillion-Gas scale. This bandwidth would be sufficient to transmit the data equivalent of a high-definition video every few seconds.

This roadmap clearly delineates the division of labor within Ethereum's boundaries. Even with all upgrades implemented, the L1 network's throughput will still have a structural ceiling compared to high-performance public chains like Solana. Applications seeking ultra-high performance will connect to the Ethereum ecosystem via independent L2 networks.

Robinhood Chain is a typical example. Robinhood launched its own Ethereum L2 network to handle tokenized stock trading, fully inheriting Ethereum's security while independently managing various business needs on L2, including compliance and regulatory arrangements.

Therefore, Ethereum in 2030 will form a large settlement network landscape: L1 handles final settlement and security, while multiple L2 networks each have their specific roles, deeply optimized for different business scenarios.

Quantum-Resistant L1 Network: Fearless in the Face of Quantum Computing Threats

The fourth North Star Goal is to achieve quantum resistance. Ethereum currently uses the ECDSA algorithm for wallets and the BLS algorithm for validators. If a sufficiently powerful quantum computer emerges, the existing cryptographic system will be broken. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests phasing out ECDSA starting in 2030, with a full ban by 2035. Google has set 2029 as the deadline for switching its internal systems to quantum-resistant cryptography. The arrival of quantum technology capable of breaking Ethereum's cryptography is happening faster than the market previously anticipated.

The core solution is to replace the existing signature algorithms with hash-based cryptography, which is resistant to quantum attacks. Furthermore, hash-based signatures are highly compatible with ZK proofs, aligning with the technical roadmap for the Giga-Gas L1 network. The Ethereum Foundation established a dedicated Post-Quantum research team in January 2026 and set up a $1 million prize to verify the security of hash functions.

According to the "Strawmap" plan, the transition will span multiple hard forks. First, it will support pre-registration of quantum-resistant public keys, followed by sequential upgrades to validators' voting signatures, the transaction layer, and the data layer. The goal is to establish a hash-based cryptographic L1 network by 2029. If this plan is successfully implemented, Ethereum will be able to ensure asset security even in the quantum computing era.

Privacy-Native L1 Network: Transaction Privacy as a Foundational Capability

The final North Star Goal is a capability Ethereum has never possessed. Currently, all transactions on Ethereum are publicly visible on the network. Anyone can look up an address and find its balance and complete transaction history. For individuals, this poses a privacy risk; for businesses wanting to process payroll or pay suppliers on-chain, making transaction details public directly hinders adoption.

The L1 privacy solution aims to achieve shielded transfers, effectively placing today's completely open transactions, which are like open postcards, into a sealed envelope. The sender, receiver, and transaction amount are hidden, while a ZK proof demonstrates to the network that the transaction complies with the rules. ZK proofs run throughout Ethereum's upgrade path, and privacy transformation is a significant part of this.

Based on the "Strawmap," privacy infrastructure could potentially be implemented as early as the Hegotá hard fork. The next upgrade phase will involve modifying the transaction mempool, encrypting transaction content before it is included in a block. Among the five goals, the details of the privacy-related plan are the most vague and are highly influenced by the regulatory environment, making it the most uncertain. Nonetheless, Ethereum including native L1 privacy in its official roadmap for the first time is a significant shift in itself.

Conclusion: Ethereum in Four Years

A concise summary of the five North Star Goals is as follows:

• Fast L1: Transaction finality time reduced from 15 minutes to seconds, block interval from 12 seconds to 4 seconds;
• Giga-Gas L1: ZK proofs replace re-execution, L1 processes 1 billion Gas per second, increasing throughput by approximately 200 times;
• Trillion-Gas L2: L2 data capacity expanded to 1 GB per second, supporting a large number of parallel-running Rollups;
• Quantum-Resistant L1: Signature system switched to hash-based cryptography, calmly coping with the impact of quantum computing;
• Privacy-Native L1: Hiding transaction information while proving compliance becomes a standard feature of Ethereum.

The entities driving the roadmap forward are also changing. The Ethereum Foundation recently laid off about 20% of its staff, gradually shrinking its functions, while many new institutions are filling the gaps in the ecosystem. In June 2026, Ethlabs was officially established. This non-profit research and development institution received support from Ethereum ecosystem companies and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. A week later, Ethereum Institutional, founded by former members of the foundation's enterprise team, emerged. Ethereum is evolving towards a purer open-source system, with a small foundation collaborating with numerous independent institutions to jointly drive development.

Of course, no plan is guaranteed to be implemented on schedule. "Strawmap" is merely a continuously revised draft, not a finalized roadmap. The upcoming Glamsterdam hard fork has already been postponed from the first half of 2026 to the second half. Development progress may be delayed, cryptographic algorithms may require longer security audits, and the features included in each hard fork will continue to be adjusted based on ongoing discussions among researchers and the community.

Regardless of its final form, Ethereum will remain the world's most neutral, trustless general-purpose computing network. "Strawmap" clearly sets the goal: to become faster, more capable, and more secure while retaining its core positioning.