Ethereum researcher Justin Drake unveiled the “Lean Ethereum” proposal on July 31 that reframes the bottom layer across the imperatives of survivability towards nation-state and quantum threats and orders-of-magnitude efficiency features with out sacrificing decentralization.
The brand new tips have been dubbed “fort mode” and “beast mode,” respectively.
Printed on the Ethereum Foundation weblog, the imaginative and prescient argued that the community can concurrently harden safety and radically scale by anchoring the mainnet in hash-based cryptography and restructuring all three protocol sublayers, that are consensus, information, and execution.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Drake lately addressed the idea throughout an ETH-focused event in Berlin.
Fort mode and beast mode
Drake’s safety thesis highlights that Ethereum should run for many years, even centuries, underneath adversarial circumstances.
Based on the roadmap, “if the web is up, Ethereum is up” is the objective. On efficiency, Lean Ethereum targets roughly 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) on mainnet by way of aggressive vertical scaling and roughly 1 million TPS on layer-2 (L2) blockchains by way of expansive horizontal scaling.
He added that enabling “moon-math” is not aspirational, suggesting real-time zero-knowledge digital machines (zkVMs) for execution and information availability sampling (DAS) for information throughput.
A complementary usability intention is full-chain verification on shopper units, equivalent to browsers, telephones, and wallets.
Three “lean” sublayers
Lean Ethereum proposes coordinated upgrades throughout three completely different layers. The primary is “Lean consensus,” or Beacon Chain 2.0, targeted on hardening the Beacon Chain for max safety and decentralization, with near-instant finality measured in seconds.
Lean information (Blobs 2.0) is the second layer. The objective is to allow post-quantum “blobs” with granular sizing to protect a calldata-like developer expertise whereas boosting throughput.
Lastly, Lean execution (EVM 2.0) consists of a minimal, SNARK-friendly instruction set that preserves EVM compatibility and community results however accelerates proving and verification.
Collectively, these adjustments intention to ship “efficiency abundance” underneath non-negotiable continuity and ease constraints.
Hash-based crypto as the usual material
Lean Ethereum treats the hash operate as the elemental primitive throughout layers. Combination signatures in consensus supplanting Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS), hash-based commitments changing Kate, Zaverucha, and Goldberg (KZG) within the information layer, and hash-centric zkVMs streamlining execution verification.
The strategy is designed to concurrently future-proof towards quantum adversaries whereas harmonizing with the speedy rise of SNARKs throughout the stack.
Drake mentioned that Lean Ethereum is as a lot an engineering aesthetic as a roadmap. The idea relies on minimal modules, encapsulated complexity, formal verification, and provable safety and optimality.
The emphasis on “lean craft” seeks to prune legacy complexity whereas standardizing on primitives which are simpler to purpose and confirm.