Vitalik Buterin Unveils 4-Year Roadmap for Faster, Quantum-Resistant Ethereum

• Vitalik Buterin has proposed a four-year plan under which Ethereum will achieve quantum resistance via new hash-based signatures and quantum-resistant cryptography.
• Buterin has sold nearly 17,200 ETH, surpassing his stated target of 16,384 ETH which he said he’d sell to support ecosystem projects.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has introduced the Strawmap roadmap for Ethereum, seeking to boost transaction speed, introduce first-class privacy and make it quantum resistant. Founder Vitalik Buterin has supported the roadmap just days after revealing he was working on a new ‘non-ugly’ version of Ethereum.

Drake, a core researcher with the Ethereum Foundation, says Strawmap is a technical resource for researchers and developers. It places all envisioned Layer 1 protocol upgrades on a single visual for a unified perspective on the future of the network. These upgrades will span up to five years, switching gears from most roadmaps that only focus on the next few upgrades. The current one is focused on Glamsterdam in the first half of the year and Hegota in the second half, as CNF has reported.

Strawmap outlines seven forks by the end of 2029, working out to roughly a new fork every six months. This timeline can be highly compressed if AI is used to aid in development, Drake says. The proposed upgrades are grouped into consensus, data and execution. Each fork has a headliner, which is the most prominent and ambitious upgrade.

In the upcoming Glamsterdam, the headliner is the enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation and Blob Autoscaling Limits, as CNF reported. With Hegota, the proposed headliner is FOCIL, which takes away the ability of block builders to censor valid transactions.

Drake added that the Ethereum Foundation is encouraging developers to share feedback on the roadmap, which will evolve in time.

Vitalik Supports Strawmap

One of the first to share his feedback was founder Vitalik Buterin, who has thrown his weight behind the “very important document.”

On making Ethereum quantum-resistant, he stated:

The roadmap outlines how Ethereum can make finality resistant to quantum attacks, which might take years. However, if quantum computers advance much faster than projected, Vitalik notes that the network can make slots quantum-resistant, “so we may well quite quickly get to a regime where, if quantum computers suddenly appear, we lose the finality guarantee, but the chain keeps chugging along.”

The proposal comes amid market concern over Vitalik’s disposal of his ETH coins. Since the month started, he has sold 17,196 tokens, 5% higher than the 16,384 ETH he had pledged to sell to support ecosystem projects as the Ethereum Foundation scales back its funding, as CNF reported.

Since he started selling, ETH has lost nearly 40% of its value and was trading just above $2,000 at time of writing.