Vitalik’s Strawmap Revealed: How Ethereum Will Scale to 100M Gas Without Killing Solo Staking

Vitalik Buterin Unveils Ethereum’s Dual-Track Scaling Strategy

Ethereum’s long-running debate over scalability and decentralization has entered a new phase. In a detailed technical outline, Vitalik Buterin explained how the network intends to significantly expand transaction capacity—without compromising validator accessibility or decentralization.

Building on the “Strawmap” roadmap, Buterin described a two-tiered strategy: short-term execution upgrades to improve efficiency, and long-term architectural shifts centered around zero-knowledge proofs and advanced data availability solutions.

Short-Term Scaling: Improving Execution Efficiency

In the near term, Ethereum developers are focusing on making block validation faster and more predictable. These improvements are tied to the upcoming “Glamsterdam” upgrade, which introduces several structural changes aimed at safely increasing throughput.

Block-Level Access Lists

One of the most important changes involves block-level access lists. These enable different parts of a block to be verified in parallel rather than sequentially. The result is reduced bottlenecks during block validation and improved overall efficiency.

Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS)

Another core upgrade is enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS). This mechanism restructures how blocks are constructed and verified, allowing a larger portion of each block slot to be used for verification.

Currently, validators operate within a narrow time window to process blocks. ePBS makes it safer to expand this window—allowing Ethereum to raise gas limits while minimizing the risk of worst-case execution scenarios that could strain validators.

Gas Repricing and Safer Gas Limit Increases

Alongside structural changes, developers are also exploring gas repricing adjustments. The goal is to raise gas limits gradually without exposing validators to unpredictable spikes in computation requirements.

In short, Ethereum aims to increase throughput safely—not recklessly.

Multidimensional Gas: Controlling State Growth

A central theme in Buterin’s roadmap is the introduction of multidimensional gas accounting.

Today, Ethereum uses a largely unified gas model. Execution costs, calldata usage, and permanent state growth are all priced within the same framework. Buterin argues that this model makes scaling difficult, because increasing execution capacity also incentivizes excessive growth of Ethereum’s state.

Separating Execution from State Creation

Under the proposed system:

Execution costs and
State creation costs

would be priced separately.

Creating new state—such as adding new storage entries—would become more expensive. However, those costs would no longer count toward the per-block transaction gas cap.

BlackRock’s "ETHB" Staking ETF Debuts: Will 95% Staking Trigger an Ethereum Supply Shock?

This separation allows Ethereum to scale execution throughput more aggressively while placing economic constraints on long-term state expansion. The objective is clear: grow usage without allowing the network’s permanent data burden to spiral out of control.

Long-Term Vision: Blobs and ZK-EVMs

Beyond execution-level improvements, Ethereum’s long-term scalability depends heavily on cryptographic advancements.

Blobs and Data Availability

Blobs—first introduced to support layer-2 rollups—are expected to play a larger role in Ethereum’s evolution.

They allow validators to verify data availability without downloading and re-executing every transaction. This significantly reduces the computational load on nodes, making higher throughput feasible without increasing validator hardware requirements.

Blobs are central to Ethereum’s modular scaling philosophy: move execution to rollups while maintaining secure data availability at the base layer.

Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (ZK-EVMs)

The second pillar of long-term scaling is the growing adoption of ZK-EVMs.

Buterin outlined a staged rollout:

2026: ZK-EVM clients could become viable for a small portion of validators. Instead of fully re-executing blocks, validators could verify cryptographic proofs.
2027: Broader adoption could allow Ethereum to safely increase gas limits, particularly benefiting solo stakers who would gain a cheaper verification pathway.
Long term: Ethereum may require multiple independent proofs per block, reducing the need for most nodes to perform full execution.

This transition could dramatically reduce validator costs while preserving decentralization.

Reframing the Scalability Debate

Taken together, the Strawmap roadmap suggests that Ethereum is moving beyond the traditional “throughput vs. decentralization” trade-off.

Rather than pursuing aggressive monolithic scaling—an approach adopted by some competing networks—Ethereum’s roadmap emphasizes:

Incremental upgrades
Separation of execution and state growth
Heavy reliance on cryptographic proofs
Preservation of its existing validator base

The philosophy is evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Conclusion: Scaling Without Sacrifice

Ethereum’s strategy reflects a long-term commitment to sustainable growth. By combining near-term execution improvements with long-term ZK-based verification and modular data availability, the network aims to scale to significantly higher usage levels—without raising validator barriers.

If successfully implemented, this roadmap could redefine how blockchain networks approach scalability, positioning Ethereum as a system capable of expanding capacity while remaining credibly decentralized.

Dimitar Todorov publication: "Vitalik’s Strawmap Revealed: How Ethereum Will Scale to 100M Gas Without Killing Solo Staking" was written for 24crypto.news