Ethereum Roadmap Shifts Focus to Quantum Readiness and Privacy
Vitalik Buterin's updated Ethereum roadmap prioritizes quantum readiness and privacy features, shifting focus away from verifiable delay functions (VDFs) and EVM improvements. The latest strawman plan, published by the Ethereum Foundation, outlines seven upgrades to the base layer protocol by 2029.
The most striking change is the absence of three key areas in the original 2023 roadmap: quantum safety, post-quantum scaling, and native rollups. Instead, the new plan focuses on privacy features like keyed nonces, recent roots, a lean privacy pool, and wormholes. This shift reflects the growing importance of protecting user data as Ethereum scales.
The strawman plan also introduces new cryptographic proofs called STARKs, which will be used to verify the protocol's code. Buterin notes that formal verification is only feasible with modern AI tools, making recursive STARKs a crucial component of the updated roadmap.