Vitalik Buterin, co‑founder of Ethereum, announced on Saturday a new "Lean Ethereum" strawmap that identifies quantum resistance, scalability and privacy as the network’s primary technical priorities for 2026‑2029. He said the upgrades will be implemented over the next three to four years. The announcement follows a staff reduction of about 20% at the Ethereum Foundation and a corresponding 40% cut to its budget. In recent months, foundation leaders Hsiao‑Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak have left, and protocol contributors Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot departed in May. Buterin said quantum safety has increased in priority, noting that completing a quantum‑safe solution for blobs is now urgent. He also described privacy as a priority and called for the development of a new virtual machine such as leanISA or RISC‑V to enable programmable privacy and better scalability. Dankrad Feist, a researcher on the Tempo blockchain, said the three‑to‑four‑year timeline is too slow and that AI could accelerate development. Crypto analyst Ignas Fiodorovas supported the roadmap but questioned the foundation’s ability to meet the schedule, citing a history of missed deadlines and the absence of tokenomics improvements for ETH. The roadmap remains under development, and its success will depend on execution.