Ethereum hasn’t reached full speed yet. Now it might. Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation outlines Lean Ethereum, a plan to optimise the stack so validators stop executing and start verifying. With zk proofs in under 12 seconds and on-prem provers around 10 kW, the base layer can reach gigagas capacity and roughly 10,000 TPS while getting more decentralized. Add Fossil, seconds-level finality, and post-quantum signatures, and the changes stick. We unpack the EthProofs race, the four-phase path to mandatory proofs, the three-times-a-year gas target in EIP-7938, and why native rollups could remove gas ceilings for L2s. If you’re wondering whether Ethereum can scale without turning into a data center chain, this is the roadmap.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro: What is Lean Ethereum?
3:32 Beast Mode? Gas & Blocks
5:39 GigaGas, TeraGas, Gap to Target
9:32 Why Scale L1: Decentralization Tradeoffs
20:22 Provability, Power, Real-Time, Decentralization
24:43 L1 Security: Money, Key Uses
28:59 Lean Ethereum: SNARKs, Beast, Fort
36:32 SNARKs & zkVMs: What, Why
48:50 Execute→Verify: Validators & Lean Client
56:08 Builders, Provers, PBS, Fossil
1:08:49 Devconnect Demo, EthProofs, Roadmap Phases
1:31:06 Rollout, Gas Limits, Slots, Hardware
1:44:33 Home Provers: Power, Costs, Incentives/Penalties
1:54:38 Data Availability, Lean Consensus, Upgrades
2:04:22 Talent, Competition, Community, Closing
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RESOURCES
Justin Drake
https://x.com/drakefjustin
Lean Ethereum
https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/07/31/lean-ethereum
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