Ethereum Foundation Targets 10,000 TPS for Ethereum (ETH) by 2029

Lean Ethereum: Seven Forks to 10,000 TPS

The Ethereum (ETH) Foundation has published Strawmap, a long-term development plan that would rebuild most of the core technology of Ethereum (ETH) through roughly seven hard forks and deliver what it calls Lean Ethereum, with 10,000 transactions per second on mainnet and full quantum-computer defenses by December 2029. A hard fork is an upgrade that changes a network's core rules. The plan landed while the Ethereum price moved 7.8% over the past 24 hours, and it treats cost as a co-equal goal with speed, tying the throughput target to lower gas fees rather than pursuing them separately. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder, framed the overhaul as the network's third major evolution, on the scale of the 2022 Merge, the upgrade that reshaped crypto, which ended mining in favor of proof-of-stake. Over the next three to four years, he said, nearly every core technology making up the network will be replaced. The Foundation also concedes the 2029 horizon can move: the schedule and the order of upgrades depend on how development actually progresses.

Today the mainnet processes roughly 30 transactions per second; the roadmap aims for 10,000, an increase of more than 300 times. On layer 2, the auxiliary networks that settle back to Ethereum's mainnet, the plan targets 10 million transactions per second, a figure presented as a long-term aspiration rather than a demonstrated result. Verification changes as well: instead of every participant recomputing the transaction record, the network would confirm complex computations through concise cryptographic proofs, cutting the load on the chain and raising processing speed. Compatibility is preserved by design, so users and developers can keep existing smart contracts and services running without rebuilding them. The plan folds scaling, post-quantum security and privacy into one fork sequence instead of shipping them as separate initiatives.

Quantum Deadline and a Smaller Foundation

Quantum resistance is the roadmap's security pillar. Some cryptographic schemes in wide use today would lose their guarantees against future high-performance quantum computers, and the plan is to replace them step by step with constructions that withstand such attacks, with full defensive capability targeted by December 2029. Privacy technology sits on the same list: stronger confidentiality for transaction data, together with the ability to prove compliance with regulations where that is required.

The cadence is aggressive and explicitly elastic. Upgrades are planned at roughly six-month intervals, and the Foundation has said the sequence can be reordered as development difficulty and verification demands become clear. An October revision already moved some upgrade targets to 2029-2030. The near-term line runs from this year's Glamsterdam upgrade to Hegota in 2027, after which quantum-resistant public key registration and the new transaction verification technology follow. Each fork requires every client team and node operator to ship compatible software before activation, which is one reason the Foundation leaves the ordering open. A September development policy from the Foundation named the December 2029 quantum deadline as the core task of the wider Ethereum roadmap.

Delivery capacity is the unresolved variable. In June the Foundation cut 54 staff, about 20% of its workforce, and announced a 40% reduction in its operating budget, both framed as measures to concentrate resources on development. The market backdrop is sobering: Ethereum ETFs posted $1.61 billion in outflows across October, the longest such streak since the products launched in 2024. Application-layer scaling has been tested too; Blast's Layer 2 shut down with $6.51 million left in its bridge, a sign that capacity alone does not keep a network alive. On the protocol side, a proposed ePBS MEV policy with a 1 Ethereum (ETH) builder deposit is part of the same upgrade cycle's agenda. Four more years of near-continuous upgrades now sit on top of that record.

Verification, Not Throughput, Carries the Plan

Verification, not throughput, is where the plan succeeds or fails. If complex computation can be confirmed through succinct cryptographic proofs, the 10,000 TPS mainnet goal and the 10 million layer-2 goal become engineering problems rather than architectural ones; without that shift, both stay aspirational. The compatibility guarantee is the limit that survives the change: by committing to keep existing applications working, the roadmap caps how much of the execution layer any single fork can replace. Node operators face about seven rounds of coordinated client upgrades against a Foundation running with 20% fewer staff and a 40% smaller budget, and the October revision has already pushed work into 2030. The 2029 date is a target; the six-month cadence is the test.