Vitalik Outlines Ethereum Long-Term Roadmap, "Lean Ethereum" Will Become the Third Major Iteration

According to a post by Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin), Ethereum researchers recently held a meeting in Berlin to update the protocol's long-term development roadmap (strawmap.org). Vitalik pointed out that "Lean Ethereum" is not a single upgrade, but a series of improvements to be implemented in phases over the next three to four years. Its significance is comparable to "The Merge," almost covering the refactoring of every core module of the protocol. The main contents include: • Verification Mechanism: Introduce recursive STARKs to replace the existing direct re-execution method, becoming a first-class core component of the protocol • Quantum Safety: Priority significantly increased, all quantum-vulnerable components will be replaced, quantum-safe Blob design is already underway • Consensus Layer: Decouple availability chains and finality, achieve one to two rounds of finality, with better security and lower latency • State Layer: The existing dynamic state remains unchanged, but new types of state with stronger scalability will be added (such as UTXO storage, ring buffers, etc.). It is expected that by 2030, Ethereum will have 2TB of dynamic state + 100TB of new state. After migration of applications such as ERC20 and NFTs, gas fees can be reduced by more than 10 times • Privacy: Upgraded from an additional feature to a first-class goal, permeating designs such as Mempool and state trees • VM: In addition to EVM, leanISA or RISC-V will be introduced. The long-term goal is for the protocol layer to only directly