Ethereum’s Strawmap: Scaling, Privacy, and Execution Risks
Summary
The report presents Ethereum’s Strawmap as a strategic shift toward scaling the base layer while continuing to use rollups. It contrasts Ethereum’s strong position in assets held on-chain, such as stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets, with weaker activity measures including fees and decentralized exchange volume. It describes five long-term goals: faster finality, much higher L1 and L2 throughput, post-quantum security, and privacy.
The near-term roadmap centers on Glamsterdam and Hegotá, with proposed upgrades intended to support higher capacity and censorship resistance. Longer-term zkEVM work underpins the high-throughput and quantum-resistance goals. The report argues that added capacity could support new demand from tokenized assets and AI agents, but does not establish that demand will emerge. It also highlights a gap between technical improvements and ETH value accrual, and warns that the sequence depends on timely delivery. Later roadmap dates are directional, and the article’s competitive and market conclusions reflect its 2026 perspective.
Key ideas
- The Strawmap redirects attention toward scaling Ethereum’s base layer alongside rollup development.
- Ethereum retains strength in assets held on-chain but has lost ground in activity measures such as fees and DEX volume.
- The roadmap sets goals for speed, throughput, privacy, and resistance to quantum computing.
- ZK technology is presented as a shared foundation for high throughput and post-quantum work.
- Technical capacity gains do not guarantee stronger ETH demand or value accrual, and execution delays could compound.
Tags
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.