Buterin Recasts Ethereum Roadmap Around Quantum Resistance, Privacy, Native Rollups
Summary
- Vitalik Buterin said Ethereum’s roadmap now prioritizes quantum-computing defenses, privacy, and native rollups.
- The new roadmap downgrades or replaces verifiable delay functions (VDFs) and some EVM-related development plans.
- Ethereum also plans to move toward quantum-resistant signatures, a structure for trading data storage space and gas costs in advance, STARKs, AI code verification, and possible support for leanISA and RISC-V.
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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has reshaped the blockchain’s development roadmap to prioritize defenses against quantum computing, privacy and native rollups.
In Ethereum’s latest roadmap update, Buterin said the plan had changed substantially from the 2023 version, crypto media outlet Wu Blockchain reported on August 10. Security against attacks from quantum computers and privacy technologies have moved much higher on the priority list.
Some technologies included in earlier roadmaps, by contrast, have been downgraded or replaced. They include verifiable delay functions, or VDFs, and some development plans related to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM.
New core development areas include “native rollups,” which would allow Ethereum to support rollups through built-in functionality; a structure for trading data storage space and gas costs in advance; quantum-resistant signatures; and a new state storage model. Ethereum also plans to simplify the protocol itself while making broader use of STARKs, a zero-knowledge proof technology, and AI-based code verification.
Buterin said Ethereum could eventually support simpler execution architectures such as leanISA or RISC-V alongside the current EVM, or beneath it at a lower layer.
Minseung Kang
minriver@bloomingbit.ioBlockchain journalist | Writer of Trade Now & Altcoin Now, must-read content for investors.