Ethereum Unveils Streamlined Roadmap for Next Five Years

Ethereum is embarking on its third major iteration, with significant changes planned over the next five years. According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum researchers have finalized a roadmap called 'Streamlined Ethereum' that will replace core components and introduce new features.

The upgrade will include recursive STARKs for verification, 1-2 rounds of finality for consensus, multi-dimensional Gas pricing, and quantum-resistant cryptography. The state model will also be revamped to accommodate scalable states like UTXO and circular buffers, allowing for a total scale of up to 100TB.

The introduction of new state models is expected to reduce transaction fees by over 10 times, but the issue of who will store the 100TB state remains a topic of research. Formal verification will be fully implemented, and there are also plans to introduce RISC-V or leanISA as the underlying VM for the protocol.

Privacy upgrades have become a primary design goal, with all new components needing to support quantum-resistant, intermediary-free privacy transactions. The first step in this process is the Glasterdam fork, which will significantly raise Gas limits.