A draft Ethereum Layer 1 roadmap called “Strawmap” pulls long-term protocol ambitions into a single stitched timeline that runs through the end of the decade. The draft focuses on seven forks by 2029 on a rough cadence of one fork every six months.
The document is a coordination view for how upgrades could fit together across the Consensus Layer, Data Layer, and Execution Layer. Strawmap is explicitly framed as a work-in-progress discussion document, not a binding schedule, with at least quarterly updates expected as research and engineering progress shifts priorities.
The draft organizes upgrades as a left-to-right timeline with three color-coded horizontal layers: consensus (CL), data (DL), and execution (EL). Items cluster by theme, arrows show dependencies, and underlined text links to EIPs or deeper write-ups.
The fork naming convention also signals how the roadmap thinks about continuity. Consensus-layer forks follow a star-based naming scheme with incrementing first letters, and the draft notes finalized names for upcoming forks such as Glamsterdam and Hegotá, while later forks still use placeholders like I* and J*.
Strawmap also introduces “headliners,” meaning the most ambitious items per fork. The model keeps cadence by limiting scope: one consensus headliner and one execution headliner per fork. Glamsterdam is used as the concrete example, with ePBS as the consensus headliner and BALs as the execution headliner.
The draft anchors the timeline around five “north stars,” presented as end-state goals rather than single EIPs.
Fast L1 targets transaction inclusion and chain finality in seconds. That implies shorter slot times and a finality mechanism that feels near-instant at the user level.
Gigagas L1 targets roughly 1 gigagas per second at Layer 1, framed as about 10,000 transactions per second, with zkEVM execution proofs and real-time proving as the enabler.
Teragas L2 targets roughly 1 gigabyte per second of data bandwidth, framed as about 10 million transactions per second at Layer 2, using data availability sampling as a key scaling primitive (https://strawmap.org/).
Post-quantum L1 targets centuries-long cryptographic security, with hash-based schemes as the path to quantum resistance.
Private L1 targets privacy as a first-class feature, with native Layer 1 shielded transfers as a stated direction.
Roadmap narratives shape how an ecosystem allocates attention. A single stitched timeline tends to pull research priorities, client implementation focus, and governance debate into a shared vocabulary. Even as a draft, Strawmap creates a new baseline for what “Ethereum optimizes for next” in plain terms: faster UX, higher throughput, deeper security horizons, and privacy that is not bolted on later.
The cadence angle matters too. A predictable six-month fork rhythm encourages smaller scoped upgrades that ship incrementally. That can reduce coordination risk, but it also forces sharper trade-offs about what counts as a headliner and what stays in research.
One reason the draft spread quickly is that it offers a concrete framing for “fast L1,” and it ties directly into ongoing slot-time and finality research.
FXStreet highlights Vitalik Buterin’s response, which sketches a stepwise slot-time reduction from 12 seconds to 8, then 6, 4, 3, and potentially 2 seconds if later research supports it. The same thread references network-level work to reduce propagation delays and mentions a finality direction called Minimmit, framed as a one-round Byzantine Fault Tolerant mechanism.
This is the near-term translation: even if the 2029 end-state is aspirational, the “fast L1” arc anchors to tangible engineering levers that can be tested, shipped, and measured.
Core developer coordination channels echoing the same sequencing priorities will be the first confirmation that Strawmap is influencing real planning, not only narrative.
Mapping each north-star item to its maturity level will separate active EIPs from research-only ideas. A draft can blend both, and downstream recaps often flatten that distinction.
Near-term fork scope changes are another tell. If upcoming fork planning starts to align with the Strawmap headliner structure and dependency arrows, the timeline becomes more than a visual.
The biggest watch item is the gap between the aspirational numbers and the implementation path. “Seconds-level finality” and “gigagas L1” can coexist as goals, but they compete for engineering and complexity budgets. Strawmap’s value is that it forces those trade-offs onto one page.
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