Yesterday Ethereum turned 10. Today, lean Ethereum is unveiled as a vision—and personal mission—for the next 10 years.
We stand at the dawn of a new era. Millions of TPS. Quantum adversaries. How does Ethereum marry extreme performance with uncompromising security and decentralization?
TLDR: next-generation cryptography is central to winning both offense and defense.
Disclaimer: This is a Drake take™ aimed at a broad audience. A technical deep dive into hash-based post-quantum signatures and SNARKs will follow. A healthy diversity of views across Protocol, the EF, and the broader Ethereum community is expected and welcome. It strengthens us.
defense—fort mode
Ethereum is special. 100% uptime since genesis. Unrivaled client diversity. 130B USD in economic security (35.7M ETH staked × 3.7K USD)—maybe soon 1T USD.
Ethereum is poised to become the bedrock of the internet of value, securing hundreds of trillions over decades, even centuries.
Ethereum must survive anything: nation states, quantum computers. Whatever comes. Call it fort mode. If the internet is up, Ethereum is up. If the world is online, the world is onchain.
offense—beast mode
Ethereum is hungry. “Scale L1, scale blobs” is a strategic urgency inside the EF’s Protocol cluster. Expect low-hanging performance gains over the next 6–12 months.
Longer term? Think gigagas L1, teragas L2. Call it beast mode.
- 1 gigagas/sec on L1: 10K TPS, ambitious vertical scale
- 1 teragas/sec on L2: 10M TPS, sprawling horizontal scale
Scale vs decentralization? Why not both. The moon math we need is now tamed:
- real-time zkVMs for lean execution
- data availability sampling (DAS) for lean data
A delicious cherry on top: full chain verification across every browser, wallet, phone.
lean upgrades
Lean Ethereum proposes bold upgrades across all three L1 sublayers:
- lean consensus is beacon chain 2.0: hardened for ultimate security and decentralization, plus finality in seconds; formerly branded as “beam chain”
- lean data is blobs 2.0: post-quantum blobs, plus granular blob sizing for a calldata-like developer experience
- lean execution is EVM 2.0: a minimal, SNARK-friendly instruction set (possibly RISC-V; pronounced “risk five”), boosting performance while preserving EVM compatibility and its network effects
The consensus layer (CL), data layer (DL), execution layer (EL) have each been reimagined from first principles. Together, they unlock fort mode and beast mode.
The goal: performance abundance under the constraint of non-negotiable continuity, maximum hardness, and refreshing simplicity.
lean cryptography
Hash-based cryptography is emerging as the ideal foundation for lean Ethereum. It offers a compelling, unified answer to two megatrends reshaping the ecosystem:
- the explosive rise of SNARKs
- the looming quantum threat
Imagine the leanest cryptographic brick—the hash function—singlehandedly powering L1:
- CL: hash-based aggregate signatures upgrade BLS signatures
- DL: hash-based DAS commitments upgrade KZG commitments
- EL: hash-based real-time zkVMs upgrade EVM re-execution
A cryptographic jewel in each of lean CL, lean DL, lean EL.
lean craft
Lean Ethereum is more than a blueprint for hardening and scaling Ethereum. More than just doubling down on security, decentralisation, and cutting-edge cryptography. It is an aesthetic. An art form. A craft. Think Jiro in Dreams of Sushi. When we can go the extra mile, we do.
Minimalism. Modularity. Encapsulated complexity. Formal verification. Provable security. Provable optimality. These are subtle yet important technical considerations. Stay tuned for the post on post-quantum cryptography that will make them explicit.
lean legacy
After 10 fantastic years, lean Ethereum is a generational oath. To keep Ethereum online no matter what. To scale it without compromise. To make it worthy of those who come next.
This is about legacy. We are builders, we are missionaries. We are Ethereum. I hope you join us.
lean@ethereum.org