Ethereum Foundation unveils draft roadmap ‘Strawmap’… “Upgrade blueprint through 2029”

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has released ‘Strawmap,’ a document laying out the long-term direction for Layer 1 (L1) upgrades.

On the 26th, Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, published the document via X (formerly Twitter). Strawmap is a portmanteau of “strawman” and “roadmap,” serving as a draft blueprint intended to view L1 protocol upgrades from a long-term, integrated perspective.

The foundation said the document is a technically focused resource aimed at advanced readers such as researchers, developers and governance participants. Explanatory materials for general users will be provided separately at a later date.

A key feature of Strawmap is that it organizes L1 upgrades planned over the coming years into a single visualization. Unlike typical All Core Developers (ACD) discussions, which usually focus on the next two forks, the document presents a longer time horizon through 2029, assuming seven forks on roughly a six-month cadence.

The document outlines five “North Star” goals: a “fast L1” via shorter slots and finality within seconds; 10K TPS (1 gigagas) through zkEVM and real-time proving; 10M TPS (teragas L2) based on data availability sampling; a quantum-resistant L1 via the introduction of a hash-based scheme; and a privacy L1 including shielded ETH transfers.

Strawmap is structured into three layers—the consensus layer (CL), data layer (DL) and execution layer (EL)—and uses arrows to indicate technical dependencies and phased evolution among major upgrades. It also reflects the current development process principle of assigning one “headliner” upgrade each for the consensus and execution layers per fork.

The document was drafted based on a “strawman roadmap” discussed at an Ethereum Foundation workshop in January 2026. The foundation characterized it not as an official finalized plan but as an alignment tool to spur discussion. It stressed that in a highly decentralized ecosystem, producing a single “official roadmap” is effectively impossible, and that consensus is an ongoing and uncertain process.

The foundation added that Strawmap is an acceleration and coordination tool rather than a forecast, and said it plans to continuously revise and refine it through quarterly updates.