Ethereum Foundation Outlines Future Vision for L1 and L2 Ecosystem

The Ethereum Foundation has published a strategic document called the "Strawmap," outlining seven protocol upgrade forks planned through 2029 and the creation of a dedicated Platform team to coordinate L1 and L2 development under a single unit. The roadmap marks the most detailed public timeline the Foundation has released for how it intends to scale the Ethereum mainnet while aligning the growing rollup ecosystem around shared standards.

The Strawmap: Seven Forks Through 2029

Ethereum Foundation researchers released the Strawmap as a structured roadmap covering upgrades to L1 throughput, fee reduction, and tighter interoperability between the base layer and L2 rollups. The document spans seven distinct protocol forks scheduled through 2029, each targeting specific bottlenecks in the current architecture.

The near-term forks in the sequence, Pectra and Fusaka, address execution-layer improvements and blob capacity scaling that directly affect how cheaply L2 rollups can post data back to L1. Later forks in the timeline target deeper protocol changes around security and data availability, building toward a full danksharding implementation.

The Strawmap is explicitly framed as an exploratory discussion document, not a binding commitment. However, its focus on speed, scale, and security as the three pillars signals clear prioritization from the Foundation's research arm.

How the Foundation Frames L1 and L2 Roles

At the core of the Strawmap is a clear division of responsibilities. L1 serves as the settlement, data availability, and security base layer. L2 rollups handle execution scaling and application diversity, offloading computation from the mainnet while inheriting its security guarantees.

The most significant structural change is the creation of a dedicated Platform team responsible for both L1 protocol research and L2 ecosystem coordination. This is the first time both layers sit under one strategic unit within the Foundation, a direct response to growing concerns about fragmentation between the base chain and its rollup ecosystem.

The L1-versus-L2 tension has been a persistent debate in the Ethereum community, particularly around whether L2 rollups drain fee revenue from L1 validators. The Strawmap positions L1 and L2 as complementary rather than competing, with the Platform team tasked with ensuring that protocol upgrades on both sides remain aligned.

Blob capacity growth, a direct outcome of EIP-4844 introduced in the Dencun upgrade, features prominently in the roadmap. Expanding blob space reduces L2 posting costs, which the Foundation views as essential for keeping rollup fees competitive with alternative L1 chains.

What This Signals for Ethereum's Development Direction

The Strawmap represents an expansion of prior EF thinking rather than a departure. Ethereum's rollup-centric roadmap has been the stated strategy since 2020, but the Strawmap adds concrete fork names, sequencing, and a governance structure to execute on it.

The seven-fork timeline through 2029 gives developers and ecosystem participants a clearer view of what upgrades to expect and when. Pectra, the nearest fork in the sequence, is already in active development and targets execution-layer improvements that validators and node operators have been requesting.

The formation of the Platform team also signals that the Foundation recognizes L2 coordination cannot remain informal. As rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync grow their own ecosystems, interoperability standards and shared sequencing become more urgent. The Strawmap acknowledges this by placing L2 alignment within the same team that manages core protocol changes.

Whether the document translates into on-time delivery remains an open question. Ethereum's upgrade history includes significant delays, and the Strawmap itself cautions that timelines are provisional. The next concrete milestone is Pectra's deployment, which will serve as an early test of the Foundation's ability to execute on the roadmap's ambitious scope.

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