Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation It unveiled a “strawmap” with seven forks planned until 2029.

TLDR

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has proposed seven protocol forks for six months until 2029.

The EF protocol group targets 1 gigabytes/second of L1 throughput on zkEVMs, which equates to approximately 10,000 transactions per second.

High-volume L2 aims to support up to 10 million transactions per second in Layer 2 networks through data delivery sampling.

Streammap promotes post-quantum cryptography and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers as long-term primary protocol goals.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake released a protocol document called “strawmap” provided by the EF protocol team.

The plan outlines seven forks until 2029, working on an update every six months. Five long-term goals anchor the roadmap: fast L1 endpoint, 1 gigagas/sec throughput, high-throughput L2, post-quantum cryptography and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers.

At the end of the decade, Drake introduced the six-month fork Cadence

Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, laid out the straw as a technical coordination tool for the EF Protocol team.

The document covers seven planned forks spanning from now until 2029. It was originally developed at an internal EF workshop held in January 2026 before its official release.

Drake promoted the document on social media, writing that the straw map is “an invitation to look at L1 protocol improvements through a holistic lens.”

By putting all ideas into one perspective, the EF Protocol team aims to provide a unified perspective on Ethereum's long-term ambitions. The time horizon is more than what all core devs usually cover in recent planning cycles.

A six-month fork demo is central to how the EF Protocol team configured the straw map. Each fork is limited to one consensus topic and one execution topic to manage its speed.

For example, the upcoming Glamsterdam fork offers ePBS and BALs as two titles in each tier.

Fork names follow a star-based naming convention at the consensus layer, with letters increasing from Altair.

Upcoming forks like Glamsterdam and Hegota will carry confirmed names, while others like I* and J* will remain placeholders.

The roadmap is publicly accessible at strawmap.org and will receive updates at least quarterly as the protocol evolves.

Five long-term goals shape the EF Protocol Group's technical vision.

The five North Stars proposed by the EF Protocol Group define the technical direction until the end of the decade.

Drake outlined them: fast L1 targeted finality in seconds, 1 gigagas/sect throughput with zkEVMs, massive L2 with data delivery sampling, post-quantum encryption with hash-based schemes, and native privacy-preserving ETH transfers with encrypted transactions.

Each goal is directly linked to specific improvement tracks developed at the compliance, data, and execution layers. The 1 gigabytes/second target translates to about 10,000 transactions per second on L1.

Terragas L2 targets 1 gigabyte per second, which supports approximately 10 million transactions per second in Layer 2 networks.

Ethereum's security model of post-quantum cryptography envisions a long-term future. Hash-based cryptographic schemes are proposed methods to protect the network from future quantum computing risks. This update track reflects the EF Protocol team's focus on securing Ethereum over its current decade.

Native privacy accomplishes all five goals through secure ETH transfers. The straw map treats privacy as an elementary protocol feature rather than an application-layer concern.

Drake described the document as a living document in progress, not a formal forecast, but rather an integrated approach proposed by the EF Protocol team to advance Ethereum's core infrastructure.