Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin introduced the concept of Lean Ethereum — the third fundamental iteration of the protocol, which he compares in significance to the historic transition to Proof-of-Stake (The Merge). This is not a one-time hard fork, but a systematic set of improvements designed for deployment over three to four years. The new roadmap, published after a closed meeting of research teams in Berlin, involves replacing nearly all key components of the network.
What Will Change in Ethereum
According to the presented plan, changes will affect every layer of the stack. Transaction verification will shift to recursive STARK proofs, completely replacing direct re-execution. This will dramatically improve efficiency and reduce the load on nodes. All elements vulnerable to quantum computing will be replaced with quantum-resistant counterparts.
Special attention is given to privacy. Buterin emphasizes that it has ceased to be a secondary task and is now a first-order priority. When designing new components, developers directly ask how private transactions will pass through them without intermediaries. This is a fundamental shift in the network's design philosophy.
Additionally, the plans include formal verification of all components for maximum security, the introduction of a multidimensional gas fee model, and a deep reworking of client architecture. Importantly, according to Buterin, all these changes will be implemented with minimal impact on existing applications.
The Most Controversial Issue: Network State Management
The most radical part of the plan concerns working with the network state. The community has reached a consensus: the current type of state will remain almost unchanged and will grow moderately. In parallel, a new type of state will be added that scales much better but is not suitable for all tasks. Buterin gave an example configuration by 2030: 2 TB of the old type of state and 100 TB of the new one. The new format is ideal for ERC20 tokens, NFTs, and many DeFi scenarios, but is not suitable for complex "central" objects like Uniswap contracts or on-chain order books.
Key point: rewriting applications is not mandatory, but it will be extremely beneficial. For example, moving an ERC20 token to the new storage type could reduce fees by more than ten times. In the next five years, we can expect an increase in the gas limit, a rise in the number of blocks, and a reduction in block time. A major jump in the gas limit is expected with the Glasterdam upgrade. Each scaling step, Buterin emphasizes, depends on when it becomes safe to implement.
Cryptalist Analysis: The Lean Ethereum roadmap is not just an upgrade but a paradigm shift. The network is moving from a universal but heavyweight monolith to a modular, cryptographically protected, and privacy-by-default infrastructure. If the plan is implemented, Ethereum will not only solve the scaling problem but also lay the foundation for a new generation of decentralized applications resistant to the quantum threat. The market is likely underestimating the long-term potential of this transformation.