Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared new details about an ambitious four-year plan to dramatically improve Ethereum’s speed, security, and long-term resilience. The roadmap, nicknamed the “Strawmap” by the Ethereum Foundation Protocol team, outlines how the network could reduce block times to as little as two seconds and bring transaction finality down from minutes to seconds — all while preparing for a quantum computing future.
Buterin emphasized that the overarching goal is to make Ethereum feel more responsive and efficient without compromising security. The changes are expected to roll out gradually through a series of network upgrades over the next four years.
Faster Ethereum: Reducing Slot Time from 12 Seconds to 2
Currently, Ethereum produces a new block approximately every 12 seconds. In blockchain terms, this interval is known as “slot time.” According to Buterin, the roadmap aims to progressively reduce slot times from 12 seconds to 8, then 6, 4, and ultimately as low as 2 seconds.
Rather than making a sudden leap, Ethereum developers plan to implement incremental improvements. Buterin suggested that each reduction could follow a square-root-of-two pattern, ensuring stability and minimizing risk at every stage.
A key factor enabling shorter slot times is improving Ethereum’s peer-to-peer (p2p) communication layer. By optimizing how nodes share new blocks and eliminating redundant data downloads, block propagation across the network can become significantly faster. These p2p enhancements would allow shorter slots without introducing new security trade-offs.
The result would be a blockchain that feels closer to real-time — improving user experience across decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi platforms, and NFT ecosystems.
Faster Finality and a Quantum-Resistant Future
Beyond faster block production, Ethereum’s roadmap also targets a major improvement in transaction finality. Today, finality — the point at which a transaction becomes mathematically irreversible — can take around 16 minutes. The long-term objective is to reduce this window to between 6 and 16 seconds.
Buterin explained that the strategy involves decoupling slot time from finality. By separating these two mechanisms, developers can optimize each independently, making the system more flexible and easier to upgrade.
However, these changes are not minor tweaks. Buterin described them as a “very invasive set of changes,” meaning they will require substantial modifications to Ethereum’s consensus and cryptographic systems. As part of this overhaul, Ethereum plans to transition toward post-quantum hash-based signatures, making the network resistant to potential attacks from future quantum computers.
Interestingly, this incremental approach may allow Ethereum’s slot mechanism to become quantum-resistant before its finality system does. In a scenario where powerful quantum computers emerge unexpectedly, Ethereum could temporarily lose its finality guarantees while still continuing to produce blocks and operate securely.
The roadmap envisions a “component-by-component replacement” of Ethereum’s slot structure and consensus design. The ultimate outcome would be a cleaner, simpler, quantum-resistant, and more formally verifiable system.
The full transformation is expected to unfold through seven planned network upgrades (forks), scheduled roughly every six months. Two upcoming upgrades, Glamsterdam and Hegotá, are already confirmed for later this year.
