Vitalik: Ethereum will enter the "Lean Ethereum" phase, and the core protocol may undergo a comprehensive restructuring in the next 3–4 years.

BlockBeats news, on July 5, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that Ethereum researchers recently held a meeting in Berlin, continuing discussions with client teams from April in Svalbard, and updated the long-term protocol roadmap.

Vitalik said that "Lean Ethereum" is not a single upgrade, but a series of protocol evolutions that will be gradually implemented over the next 3 to 4 years. Its impact can be likened to "The Merge" as the second major iteration, while the current phase may constitute the third major evolution.

He pointed out that future core changes to Ethereum may include: replacing direct execution verification with recursive STARK verification, introducing quantum-resistant cryptographic systems, adjusting the consensus mechanism to a decoupled available chain and finality design, and multidimensional Gas models with state structure reconstruction.

At the state level, Ethereum may form a "two-layer state structure" around 2030, including approximately 2TB of traditional dynamic state and approximately 100TB of new scalable state, to support expansion needs for different application scenarios.

Vitalik emphasized that privacy capabilities will no longer be an add-on feature but a core goal of protocol design. At the same time, the system will rely more on formal verification to enhance security, and promote the EVM to move towards higher-level abstraction in the future, with the underlying layer gradually transitioning to a RISC-V or leanISA architecture.

Additionally, he mentioned that key parameters such as the Gas limit, Blob capacity, and block time will be adjusted multiple times in the coming years. Ethereum will continue to achieve scale expansion through client optimization and protocol upgrades.

Vitalik concluded that Ethereum is entering a phase of continuous restructuring and expansion, with the goal of completing underlying system upgrades without disrupting the existing application ecosystem.