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Ethereum Beast Mode - Scaling L1 to 10k and Beyond | Justin Drake

7 snips
Nov 12, 2025
Guest
Justin Drake
Justin Drake, an Ethereum researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, dives deep into the transformative Lean Ethereum vision. He discusses scaling Ethereum's Layer 1 to a staggering 10,000 TPS while enhancing decentralization through zkSNARKs. Justin explains the key tradeoffs between throughput and decentralization, and outlines a four-phase roadmap for mandatory proofs. He emphasizes the potential of native rollups to eliminate gas ceilings and shares insights on real-time proving and the ecosystem's competitive landscape. This is Ethereum in Beast Mode!
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INSIGHT

SNARKs Are The Two-Edged Scaling Key

  • Snarks unlock both huge L1 scale (beast mode) and stronger decentralization/security (fort mode).
  • Justin Drake argues SNARK-based proof verification lets validators verify tiny proofs instead of executing big blocks.
INSIGHT

GigaGas And TerraGas Ambitions

  • Beast mode targets giga gas/sec on L1 and teraGas for L2 data availability to unlock massive TPS.
  • Justin frames this as delivering enough throughput to support 'all of finance'.
INSIGHT

Validators Are The Primary Bottleneck

  • Ethereum today is ~500x below the giga gas target and constrained mostly by validator requirements.
  • Justin says removing validator execution bottlenecks can plausibly reach the 500x improvement.
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