Ethereum has published its most ambitious technical blueprint in years: a “Lean Ethereum” roadmap that targets roughly 10,000 transactions per second on Layer 1 and about 1 million TPS across Layer 2. The framework maps seven protocol upgrades through 2029, with quantum resistance at the top of its security agenda.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake first introduced the Lean Ethereum initiative, a decade-long framework to rebuild the network’s consensus, data, and execution layers from the ground up. The target numbers are striking: roughly 10,000 transactions per second on Layer 1 mainnet, scaling up to approximately 1 million TPS across Layer 2 solutions. For context, Ethereum currently processes somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-30 TPS on mainnet.
What the strawmap actually says
The Ethereum Foundation formalized the roadmap through a “strawmap,” a draft strategic framework it showcased at an internal workshop in January 2026. Seven distinct protocol upgrades are planned through 2029, grouped into three buckets: scaling, improved user experience, and hardening Layer 1 against emerging threats, with quantum computing resistance sitting at the top of that last category.
The architecture rests on three pillars — lean consensus, lean data, and lean execution. Near-term, the “Glamsterdam” upgrade is slated for the latter half of 2026, the first concrete implementation step.
The quantum clock is ticking
Rather than a single migration, the roadmap introduces post-quantum cryptography incrementally through successive hard forks stretching into the late 2020s. Quantum-resistant signatures would gradually replace current standards across multiple upgrades.
Supporting work includes the zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine, or zkEVM, which enables cryptographic proofs that computations ran correctly without revealing the underlying data. Client-side proving, another focus, would let users generate those proofs on their own devices instead of relying on centralized infrastructure. The framework also elevates privacy to a core protocol consideration, a role Ethereum has historically left to application-layer solutions.
What this means for investors
Roadmaps are not releases. Ethereum has a long history of ambitious timelines that slip: the original transition to proof-of-stake, initially expected around 2019, didn’t ship until September 2022. A credible path to 10,000 TPS on Layer 1 would change Ethereum’s competitive positioning against faster alternatives like Solana and Sui. The clearer test, though, is whether Glamsterdam ships on time later this year.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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