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A Personal Mission on Ethereum’s Tenth Birthday
Yesterday marked Ethereum’s tenth anniversary. Today I am publishing my own mission statement for the decade ahead: Lean Ethereum.
We stand at the dawn of a new era—million-TPS throughput, looming quantum computers—and the question is no longer whether Ethereum can scale, but how it can scale while remaining both secure and decentralized.
The decisive answer is that next-generation cryptography will be our dual-purpose weapon: simultaneously the shield and the sword.
Disclaimer: the views below are my own, aimed at a broad audience. Technical deep-dives on hash-based post-quantum signatures and SNARKs will follow. I invite dissenting voices from protocol circles, the EF, and the wider community—diversity makes us stronger.
Defensive Posture: Fortress Mode
Ethereum is singular. Since genesis it has maintained 100 % uptime, unrivaled client diversity, and $130 B in economic security (35.7 M staked ETH × $3,700); soon this could reach $1 T.
Ethereum is becoming the bedrock of the value internet, destined to guard tens of trillions in assets for decades—centuries even. It must withstand any threat, from nation-states to quantum computers. We call this Fortress Mode: as long as the internet exists, Ethereum exists. When the world is online, the world is on-chain.
Offensive Posture: Beast Mode
Ethereum is also ambitious. The EF protocol group’s north star is now “scale the L1, scale the blobs.”
Next 6–12 months
Long term:
• L1 → 1 Ggas/s (≈ 10 k TPS, vertical scaling)
• L2 → 1 Tgas/s (≈ 1 M TPS, horizontal scaling)
We call this Beast Mode. Scaling vs. decentralization is not a zero-sum game; we already have the key mathematical tools:
Real-time zkVMs for lean execution
Data-availability sampling (DAS) for lean data
And—crucially—full-chain verification will run in any browser, wallet, or phone.
The Lean Upgrades: Three Sub-Layers, One Vision
Lean Ethereum proposes a first-principles overhaul of the L1 stack:
Lean Consensus (Beacon Chain 2.0)
• Fortify security & decentralization
• Second-finality (once called “Beam Chain”)
Lean Data (Blobs 2.0)
• Post-quantum blobs
• Fine-grained blob sizes + calldata-like UX
Lean Execution (EVM 2.0)
• Minimal, SNARK-friendly ISA (likely RISC-V-based)
• Full EVM compatibility & network effects preserved
Consensus Layer, Data Layer, and Execution Layer are each re-architected to deliver Fortress Mode and Beast Mode simultaneously—exponential performance gains without compromising continuity, security, or simplicity.
Lean Cryptography: Hash-Based Foundations
Hash-based cryptography is the ideal substrate for Lean Ethereum, unifying two megatrends:
Explosive growth in SNARK technology
Imminent quantum threat
Imagine an L1 secured end-to-end by the most minimal primitive—the hash function:
CL: Hash-aggregated signatures replace BLS
DL: Hash-based DAS commitments replace KZG
EL: Hash-based real-time zkVMs replace EVM re-execution
Each layer gains its own cryptographic crown jewel.
Lean Craftsmanship
Lean Ethereum is more than a plan to harden and scale the protocol; it is an aesthetic pursuit, an art form, a standard of craft. Like Jiro Ono in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we will walk the extra mile—never one step less.
Minimalism, modularity, complexity encapsulation, formal verification, provable security, provable optimality… these subtle yet vital considerations will be unpacked in forthcoming articles on post-quantum cryptography.
Lean Legacy
After a decade of glory, Lean Ethereum is a generational vow: to keep Ethereum running—no matter what; to scale without compromise; to make it worthy of its future users.
This is about legacy. We are the builders. We are the evangelists.
We are Ethereum.
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