The next decade of Ethereum

Author: Zhixiong Pan Source: chainfeeds

On the 10th anniversary of the Ethereum Foundation (that is, at the end of July 2025), it officially launched a new technology blueprint called “Lean Ethereum”.The core goal of this blueprint is to build a more streamlined, secure and efficient Ethereum basic layer, providing a solid technical foundation for Ethereum’s development in the next decade and even longer.

What is Lean Ethereum?

Lean Ethereum was proposed by Justin Drake, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. Its main concept is to greatly streamline protocol design and introduce cryptography technology that resists quantum computing to achieve the ultimate performance improvement of the Ethereum network (million-level transaction throughput per second) and quantum-level security.

The core of the Lean Ethereum Blueprint is mainly reflected in the following two key project groups.

1. Lean Consensus (formerly Beam Chain)

The Lean Consensus is the core and foundation of Lean Ethereum.Originally named “Beam Chain”, it was released during Devcon in 2024 (even considered Eth 3.0), and later officially renamed “Lean Consensus”. This project team focuses on the new design of the Ethereum consensus layer (beacon chain).

The main goals of the Lean consensus include:

Quick confirmation: Shorten the block blocking time to about 4 seconds, achieving a final determination of about 12 seconds.
Decentralized improvement: Reduce the minimum pledge amount of verifiers from 32 ETH to 1 ETH, significantly lowering the threshold for consensus participation.
Post-quantum security: Introducing hash-based signature technology to ensure that the consensus layer is resistant to the threat of future quantum computing.
On-chain lightweight verification: Efficient verification of chain state using SNARK technology, allowing any node to easily verify the integrity of the blockchain.
Network optimization: Optimize network communication efficiency through a brand new P2P protocol (such as Gossipsub v2.0).
Polymerization proof technology: Adopt hash aggregation signatures to reduce network communication burden and improve verification efficiency.

Lean Consensus is currently a flagship project of Lean Ethereum, with special public meetings (Lean Calls), in-depth technical updates and exchanges every few weeks. The core members of the team include Justin Drake, Dmitry Khovratovich, Will Corcoran, etc.

2. PQ (Post-Quantum Cryptography) Project Team

The PQ project team focuses on upgrading cryptography, with the goal of ensuring that Ethereum can remain safe and reliable in the future quantum computer era.The main research directions of the PQ project team:

Hash signature algorithm: Replace the existing elliptic curve signature algorithm with a hash signature scheme that resists quantum attacks.
Data Commitment Optimization: Move from existing KZG polynomial commitments to hash commitments to improve data security on the chain.
Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP): Develop efficient SNARK/STARK circuits suitable for hashing algorithms for state verification.
Formal verification: Strict formal verification of the new cryptographic scheme to ensure the correctness of implementation and protocol design.

The core members of the PQ project team include Will Corcoran, Antonio Sanso, George Kadianakis, etc., and are jointly promoted by internal researchers and external academic experts of the Ethereum Foundation.

3. Lean data and Lean execution

In addition to the two core project groups mentioned above, Lean Ethereum also has two important but not independent team-operated project groups: Lean Data and Lean Execution.

Lean Data

Lean Data focuses on improving the performance of the data availability layer, such as the following ways to achieve a significant improvement in data throughput capabilities on the Ethereum chain:

PeerDAS v1 and v2: Implement distributed data availability sampling and greatly improve data throughput.
BPO (Blob Parameter Only) mechanism: Automatically adjust data storage parameters and gradually increase the on-chain data capacity.
FullDAS and mempool sharding: Further optimize data broadcasting and storage efficiency.

The ultimate goal of Lean data is to achieve Teragas-level data transmission to support a large number of future Layer2 application requirements.

Lean execution (also known as EVM 2.0)

Lean Execution is committed to completely refactoring Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), with the goal of achieving a streamlined, efficient, and zero-knowledge-friendly execution environment.The main research directions include:

zkVM based on RISC-V architecture: Simplify the instruction set and reduce proof overhead.
Real-time zero-knowledge proof: Improve the speed of proof generation and make real-time verification possible.
Compatibility and migration paths: Gradually introduce new zkVMs, run in parallel with existing EVMs, and finally make a complete transition.
Hardware acceleration support: Explore zero-knowledge proof acceleration solutions based on dedicated ASICs or FPGAs.

Lean data and Lean execution are currently synchronized through the official blog of the Ethereum Foundation, protocol updates, and the Ethereum Magicians.

The long-term significance of Lean Ethereum

The Lean Ethereum Project is a major layout of the Ethereum Foundation’s development path in the next decade.Lean consensus, as the core pillar, ensures the security and scalability of the chain through more efficient protocol design; PQ projects build a defense line against the threat of quantum computing; Lean data and Lean execution respectively ensure the improvement of on-chain data throughput and smart contract execution performance.

This streamlined, efficient and secure new architecture aims to build the Ethereum main network into a global trust infrastructure that can last decades or even hundreds of years, carrying the huge decentralized application ecosystem in the future.