The network is moving away from being a slow giant to become a high-speed ‘internet of value’ by 2029

The Ethereum Foundation’s newly released “Strawmap” reads, at first glance, like something only a protocol researcher could immediately comprehend. It’s dense, diagram-heavy and packed with references to forks, zkEVMs and data availability sampling.

But beneath the technical language is a far simpler story: Ethereum — the second-largest blockchain with more than $200 billion market cap — is trying to decide what kind of infrastructure it wants to be by the end of the decade.

The ‘Strawmap’ — explicitly framed as a draft, not an official plan — sketches out Ethereum upgrades through 2029. It is not binding, but it signals where some of the network’s most influential researchers believe the base layer should head next.

“The Strawmap is largely independent from Ethereum governance… it’s a tool that helps inform R&D well ahead of Ethereum governance, potentially even years ahead,” Justin Drake, a prominent Ethereum Foundation researcher, told CoinDesk in an interview.

That direction has real consequences beyond core developers.

At the center of the document are five ambitions: near-instant transaction finality, dramatically higher throughput, built-in privacy, quantum-resistant cryptography and tighter integration between Ethereum’s base layer and its layer 2 ecosystem.

Stripped of jargon, the goal is straightforward: make Ethereum faster, more scalable, more private and durable enough to last a long time.

Today, Ethereum transactions are included in blocks quickly, but the point at which they are considered irreversible, known as finality, takes too long (roughly 16 minutes). For most casual users, that nuance is invisible. For exchanges, bridges and financial applications, it’s critical.

In a thread responding to the roadmap, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin laid out how that could change. “Today, finality takes 16 minutes,” he wrote, adding that the goal is to “decouple slots and finality” and move toward a system where “endgame finality time might be eg. 6–16 sec.”

Moving from minutes to seconds changes how comfortably large amounts of value can move across the network.

The Layer 2 debate

Earlier this month, Buterin argued that some of the assumptions behind the original layer 2 roadmap “no longer make sense” in their earlier form. Layer-2 networks were previously incorporated into Ethereum’s roadmap to scale the network by processing transactions off the main blockchain and settling them back to Ethereum, helping reduce congestion and fees.

However, as layer 1 or base layer scaling has improved and some rollups have taken longer than expected to decentralize, the idea that Ethereum would outsource most of its scaling burden entirely to L2s has become less clear-cut.

Instead, Buterin suggested a more balanced future — one where the base layer continues to strengthen while layer 2 networks evolve into more specialized roles, whether for privacy, specific applications or enhanced security models.

“Ultimately, we’re going to have finality in seconds,” Drake told CoinDesk, arguing that faster settlement will “help with bridging between the L2s” and improve user experience.

The Strawmap reflects that shift. It doesn’t necessarily say layer 2s will go extinct, but neither does it treat layer 1 as frozen. Instead, it builds on a stronger base layer, alongside improvements that enable significantly higher layer 2 capacity, which could be seen as a dual-track scaling strategy.

Privacy and quantum threat

Privacy marks another notable shift in the draft of the new roadmap.

Ethereum’s transparency has long been viewed as a positive, as every transaction is visible. But openness limits certain use cases. The Strawmap contemplates native “shielded” transfers at the base layer, which would allow ETH to move without exposing full transaction details publicly. For individuals, that’s a matter of financial discretion. For businesses, it could determine whether certain activities move onchain at all.

And then there’s the long game: post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computing remains a developing field, but if Ethereum is meant to secure trillions in value over decades, its security assumptions cannot remain static. The Ethereum Foundation recently brought together a post-quantum team, and the roadmap only shows that it continues to double down on these efforts.

For developers and businesses, the roadmap provides directional clarity. Ethereum has often been criticized for moving slowly or for perpetually delaying the timelines of upgrades. By publishing a multi-year sketch, researchers are signaling that the network’s next phase is not just about patching limitations.

Ethereum’s history, though, is full of ambitious timelines that are overstretched. Governance in a decentralized system ensures debate and revision. The Strawmap itself acknowledges it will evolve.

“For me, this is ultimately about Ethereum becoming the internet of value, and ether, the asset, becoming money for the internet,” Drake told CoinDesk.

Read more: Ethereum Foundation drops most ambitious roadmap in years, targets finality in seconds by 2029