A draft roadmap proposes seven Ethereum upgrades by 2029, targeting faster block times, near-instant finality, and major scaling breakthroughs.
Posted February 26, 2026 at 7:33 am EST.
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has introduced a draft long term roadmap called the “strawmap,” sketching out seven proposed protocol forks through 2029 at a pace of roughly one upgrade every six months. The document is meant as a discussion framework rather than an official plan, mapping how major technical goals could fit together over the rest of the decade.
Among the headline ambitions is a much faster base layer. Today, Ethereum produces blocks every 12 seconds, with finality taking about 16 minutes. Under the strawmap, slot times could gradually fall to 8, 6, 4, 3 and potentially 2 seconds, according to Vitalik Buterin. Finality could shrink dramatically as well, eventually landing in a range of 6 to 16 seconds if research milestones are met.
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The roadmap also highlights five “north stars,” including scaling to 1 gigagas per second on Layer 1, boosting Layer 2 data throughput, adding post quantum cryptography, and enabling native shielded ETH transfers.
Drake described the plan as a coordination tool, one coherent path among many possible futures for Ethereum.
