Ethereum Foundation: “lean Ethereum” defines the next decade

Author: Justin Drake, Source: Ethereum Foundation

Yesterday, Ethereum (Ethereum) celebrated its 10th birthday.

Today, “Lean Ethereum” is officially unveiled as a vision for the next 10 years – and my personal mission.

We are standing at the dawn of a new era.Millions of TPS, the threat of quantum opponents…

How does Ethereum find a balance between extreme performance and uncompromising security and decentralization?

In short: the next generation of cryptography is at the heart of winning offensive and defensive battles.

Disclaimer: This article is Drake’s personal opinion and is aimed at readers.In-depth analysis of the hash-based post-quantum signatures and SNARKs will be released in the future.We look forward to and welcome the diverse perspectives of the Agreement Layer, the Ethereum Foundation and community members, which will only make us stronger.

Defensive mode – Fort mode

What makes Ethereum special is:

• Since the creation of the world100% uptime

• Unrivaled client diversity

• $130 billion in economic security (35.7 million pledged ETH × $3700) – perhaps soon1 trillion US dollars

Ethereum is expected to become the cornerstone of the “value Internet”, protecting millions of trillions of assets in the next few decades or even hundreds of years.

Ethereum must be able toResist all threats: Whether it is national power or quantum computers.

No matter what happens in the future, as long as the Internet is online, Ethereum will be online.

If the world is connected, then the world is on the chain.

Offensive mode – beast mode

Ethereum remainsHungry.

In the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol cluster, “Extend L1, Expand blobs” has become a strategically urgent task.

It is expected that there will be easy-to-get performance improvements in the next 6 to 12 months.

In the long run?Imagine:

• L1 reaches gigagas level(10K TPS), vertical performance limit improvement

• L2 reaches teragas level(1M TPS), unlimited expansion of horizontal scale

The balance between expansion and decentralization?Why can’t we have both?

The “moon-level mathematics” we need has been tamed:

• Real-time zkVMs(Simplified execution)

• Data Availability Sampling (DAS)(Simplified data)

Icing on the cake: Every browser, wallet, or mobile phone can be fully verified.

Lean upgrade plan

Lean EthereumA bold upgrade idea was proposed in the three sub-layers of L1:

1. Lean consensus layer

• Beacon Chain 2.0

• Strengthening extreme security and decentralization

• Second-level endgame

• Previous codenamed “beam chain”

2. Lean data layer

• Blobs 2.0

• Post-quantum security blobs

• Fine-grained blob size control brings a development experience similar to calldata

3. Lean execution layer

• EVM 2.0

• Minimalist, SNARK-friendly instruction set (probably RISC-V, pronounced as “risk five”)

• Improve performance while maintaining EVM compatibility and network effects

These three levels (CL, DL, EL) are reconceived from first principles.

Together they unlockedfort mode(Fortress Mode) andbeast mode(Beast mode).

Target:Achieve abundant and abundant performance without compromise on continuity, extreme safety and simplicity.

Lean Cryptography

Hash cryptography is becomingLean EthereumThe ideal cornerstone of

It provides a unified and powerful answer to two major trends that are reshaping the ecology:

1. SNARK’s explosive growth

2. Approximate quantum threat

Imagine the most concise cryptography primitives—Hash function, single-handed drive L1:

• CL: Upgrade existing BLS signatures based on hash

• DL: Hash-based DAS commitment to upgrade existing KZG commitments

• EL: Hash-based real-time zkVM, upgrade EVM and re-execute

In lean CL, lean DL, lean EL, there is a cryptographic gem.

Lean Craftsman Spirit

Lean Ethereum is not only a blueprint for strengthening and expanding Ethereum.

It is not only an additional increase in security, decentralization and cutting-edge cryptography.

It’s a kindaesthetics,A sort ofArtistic form,A sort ofCraftsman spirit.

Just like Jiro Ono in “The God of Sushi” – as long as it can be better, we will definitely do it.

Minimalism.Modular.The complexity of packaging.Formal verification.Proofable security.Proofable Optimality.

These seemingly subtle but are crucial technological pursuits.

Please pay attention to the subsequent post-quantum cryptography special articles, and we will expand it in detail.

Lean inheritance

After a stunning 10 years, Lean Ethereum is a generational pledge:

• Keep Ethereum online in any case

• Achieve scale expansion without compromise

• Make it worthy of future generations

This is a story about inheritance.

We are builders, we are missionaries, and we are Ethereum.

I hope you can move forward with us.