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Ethereum has spent years promising it would eventually become fast, cheap, and scalable. Now there’s a document with actual deadlines. A draft roadmap published by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake lays out a plan for roughly seven hard forks by 2029, each arriving about every six months, with targets that would fundamentally reshape how the network operates.
The plan, nicknamed the “Strawmap,” aims to slash transaction finality from approximately 16 minutes down to as little as 6 seconds. It also targets around 10,000 transactions per second on Layer 1, with Layer 2 capacity potentially reaching 10 million TPS through data availability sampling. For context, Visa processes roughly 1,700 TPS on average.
What the Strawmap actually proposes
The cornerstone of the finality improvement is something called “Minimmit,” a single-slot finality mechanism. Right now, Ethereum transactions technically reach finality after about 16 minutes, which is the time it takes for the network to fully confirm a block is irreversible. Reducing that to 6 to 16 seconds would put Ethereum in the same ballpark as centralized payment networks, at least in terms of speed.
The throughput ambitions are equally aggressive. Hitting 10,000 TPS on the base layer would represent an enormous leap from Ethereum’s current capacity of roughly 15 to 30 TPS. The path to 10 million TPS on Layer 2 runs through data availability sampling, a technique that lets validators verify large amounts of data without downloading all of it.
The Strawmap prioritizes post-quantum cryptography, specifically hash-based signatures designed to withstand attacks from quantum computers. Cryptographic upgrades take years to implement, and the roadmap includes fork milestones for post-quantum readiness by 2029.
Privacy also gets a meaningful upgrade path. The roadmap includes native shielded ETH transfers, which would allow users to transact without exposing their balances and transaction history to anyone scanning the blockchain.
Vitalik’s endorsement and the ship of Theseus
Vitalik Buterin publicly highlighted the Strawmap as an important step for Ethereum’s evolution. His framing was characteristically philosophical: he described the cumulative upgrades as a “ship of Theseus” transformation, where every component gets replaced over time until the network is functionally a different system while maintaining continuity.
The Strawmap remains a draft document, originally intended for internal developer discussion rather than public consumption. Ethereum has a long history of delayed upgrades. The merge from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, originally anticipated years earlier, didn’t happen until September 2022.
What this means for ETH holders and the broader market
Seven hard forks in roughly three years is an extraordinarily aggressive pace for a network securing hundreds of billions of dollars in value. Since the 2022 Merge, Ethereum has shipped incremental hard forks including Dencun in 2024 and Pectra in 2025; the Strawmap builds on this trajectory with a longer-term transformation plan.
The post-quantum cryptography push could become a competitive moat. Most Layer 1 blockchains haven’t seriously begun addressing quantum threats, and the Strawmap includes fork milestones for quantum-resistant cryptography by 2029.
Investors should watch whether the first fork in the sequence ships on schedule, because that will signal whether the six-month cadence is realistic or aspirational.
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