Ethereum Layer Strategy: How L1 zkEVM Changes Blockchain Short and Long Term

Since entering 2026, Ethereum faces a critical moment in the evolution of its layer architecture. The frequency of announcements from the core development community has reached its peak, reflecting a fundamental strategic shift in how the ecosystem should develop. From a short-term layer perspective, Ethereum is now balancing the roles of Layer 1 and Layer 2; but its long-term vision points toward a much more ambitious transformation: turning Ethereum’s L1 itself into an integrated zkEVM system, rather than just serving as the security foundation for L2.

This shift in understanding is reflected in a series of recent technical proposals. On February 26, Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation released a draft roadmap called Strawmap, outlining the development direction of the Ethereum L1 protocol for the coming years. The document covers five main targets: increasing finality speed to seconds, implementing a “Gigagas” L1 with throughput up to 10,000 TPS via zkEVM, launching high-speed L2 based on DAS (Data Availability Sampling), quantum-resistant cryptography, and native privacy features—all planned through seven hard forks until 2029, averaging one every six months.

From Focus on L2 to Reintegrating L1: Three Waves of Ethereum Narrative Change

Ethereum’s ten-year journey can be mapped through three clear phases of narrative evolution, each reflecting different layer priorities.

Phase One (2015–2020): The Era of Programmable Ledgers

Ethereum’s core narrative is creating a platform for Turing-complete smart contracts. During this period, Ethereum’s main advantage over Bitcoin was execution flexibility: the ability to run DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and various other decentralized applications. The L1 protocol became the primary execution layer, hosting most activity in the crypto-economy. This role positioned Ethereum as the “backbone of Web3 infrastructure,” though scalability was not yet a serious concern.

Phase Two (2021–2023): The Era of L2 Rollups

As gas fees on Ethereum mainnet soared, the narrative shifted. L2 rollups became the dominant solution, and Ethereum repositioned itself: from the main execution layer to a settlement layer. Upgrades like The Merge (2022) and EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding) were designed to support this model—L1 responsible for security and data availability, with main computation migrating to L2. This layer strategy provided significant scalability but also created new dilemmas.

Phase Three (2024–2025): Reflection and Repositioning

The success of L2 brought an unexpected paradox: users massively shifted to Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and other L2 platforms, leaving Ethereum L1 with relatively limited activity. The value captured by L1 declined, while L2 dominated. Fundamental questions arose within the community: if all users and activity are on L2, what is the relevance of L1? How can L1 capture long-term value?

These questions drove radical evolution. The community realized that a layer strategy relying solely on L2 is unsustainable. Reintegration and synergy between L1 and L2 are needed, not just separate work divisions.

Strawmap 2026: Eight Technical Pathways Toward an Integrated L1 zkEVM

This new vision takes concrete form in eight closely interconnected technical pathways. Each is a multi-year project, and overall success requires simultaneous progress across all lines. What sets L1 zkEVM apart from previous scalability efforts is its complexity: not a single breakthrough, but the orchestration of eight interdependent innovations.

Pathway 1: Formalizing EVM Specification

The foundation of zero-knowledge proofs is precise mathematical definitions. Currently, EVM behavior is defined by client implementations (Geth, Nethermind, Besu, etc.), not by a strict formal specification. Inconsistencies at boundary cases make ZK circuit development very difficult. This pathway aims to convert every instruction and state transition rule of the EVM into a machine-verifiable formal specification. Without this, all subsequent steps are built on shaky ground.

Pathway 2: Migrating to ZK-Friendly Hash Functions

Ethereum currently widely uses Keccak-256, which is highly non-optimal for ZK circuits—computational overhead is huge, dramatically increasing proof time and cost. This pathway involves gradually replacing Keccak with ZK-friendly hash functions like Poseidon and Blake variants, especially in Merkle trees and proof paths. This change has broad impact because hash functions are pervasive throughout the protocol.

Pathway 3: Replacing Merkle Patricia Trees with Verkle Trees

Ethereum’s state tree infrastructure currently uses Merkle Patricia Trees (MPT). Verkle Trees replace them with vector commitments, compressing witness sizes by dozens of times. For L1 zkEVM, this means drastically reducing data needed to prove each block, speeding up proof generation, and making L1 zkEVM economically feasible. Verkle Trees are a key infrastructural prerequisite for the viability of L1 zkEVM.

Pathway 4: Stateless Clients

A stateless client is a node that verifies blocks without storing the full Ethereum state database locally—only using witness data included in the block itself. Tied closely to Verkle Trees (feasible only if witnesses are small enough), stateless clients serve two purposes: lowering hardware barriers to running nodes (enhancing decentralization) and providing clear input boundaries for ZK proofs (the prover only needs to process witnesses, not the entire world state).

Pathway 5: Standardizing ZK Proof Systems

L1 zkEVM requires mature ZK proof systems to generate proofs of block execution. The ZK landscape is currently fragmented, with no universally recognized best solution. This pathway defines a standardized proof interface at the Ethereum protocol layer, enabling various proof systems to compete via a common interface, rather than a monopoly of one solution. This maintains technical openness while allowing ongoing evolution. The Ethereum Foundation’s PSE (Privacy and Scaling Explorations) team has already accumulated many early experiments in this direction.

Pathway 6: Decoupling Execution and Consensus Layers

Currently, Ethereum’s execution layer (EL) and consensus layer (CL) communicate via the Engine API. In a L1 zkEVM architecture, each state transition in the execution layer requires a ZK proof. Proof generation can take much longer than block production, creating a bottleneck. This pathway addresses the core problem: how to separate execution and proof generation without disrupting the consensus mechanism—execution can complete quickly first, while proofs are generated asynchronously and verified later by validators to finalize finality. This involves deep modifications to the finality model.

Pathway 7: Recursive Proofs and Proof Aggregation

The cost of ZK proof generation for a single block is very high. But if proofs from multiple blocks can be recursively compressed into a single proof, verification costs are distributed and much lower. Progress in this pathway directly determines how low the costs can go for L1 zkEVM.

Pathway 8: Developer Toolchains and EVM Compatibility

All these ultimate technical reforms must be transparent to Ethereum smart contract developers. Tens of thousands of existing contracts must not break, and developer tooling should not require rewriting. This pathway is often underestimated but can be the most time-consuming; each previous EVM update required extensive backward compatibility testing and tooling adjustments. The changes needed for L1 zkEVM are even larger, exponentially increasing the workload for tooling and compatibility.

Short-term Impact on Layer: What Changes for L2 and the Ecosystem?

This transformation has immediate and long-term implications for various stakeholders.

Short-term (2026–2027) implications

In the near term, L2 remains dominant for scalability. The Ethereum Foundation explicitly states that L1 zkEVM is not a replacement for L2 but a complementary evolution. L2 rollups will continue to be the primary execution layer for high transaction volumes, giving builders and users confidence to keep building within the mature Layer 2 ecosystem.

However, as Ethereum L1 becomes more capable in the coming years, the positioning of L2 will evolve from “secure scaling solution” to “specialized execution environment.” The L2 that can find a niche value proposition—whether through specialized VM, cost optimization, or privacy features—will survive and thrive in the new landscape.

Long-term (2028–2029) implications

When L1 zkEVM is fully integrated, Ethereum will no longer be just a settlement layer for L2. It will become the “verifiable computation root” for the entire Web3 ecosystem. Each chain, each L2, can ultimately anchor provenance mathematically to Ethereum’s ZK proof chain, creating a unified yet decentralized trust hierarchy.

Why This Momentum Matters: Builder Confidence and Ethereum’s Long-term Positioning

The Strawmap announcement comes at a moment when the market doubts ETH’s performance. From this perspective, the most valuable aspect of this roadmap is reaffirming Ethereum as “foundational infrastructure,” not a commodity.

For Builders: Strawmap provides clear directional certainty. After a period of uncertainty about Ethereum’s relevance, it’s now clear that the core ecosystem will continue to evolve with bold technical ambitions. This inspires confidence for long-term commitment.

For Users: These technical upgrades will finally translate into tangible experiences—seconds to finality, smooth asset flows between L1 and L2, privacy as a native feature rather than an add-on.

For Investors: It’s a moment to reevaluate Ethereum’s positioning anew. If L1 zkEVM is successfully implemented, Ethereum will no longer be just a settlement layer for L2 but the verified trust root for Web3. This is a shift in narrative quality, not just quantitative improvement.

In reality, L1 zkEVM will not be launched immediately. Full implementation might only materialize around 2028–2029 or even later. But it fundamentally redefines Ethereum’s value proposition.

These eight technical pathways are not just a roadmap—they are a manifestation of Ethereum’s unique developer culture: capable of pushing eight interdependent technical work streams simultaneously, each a multi-year engineering project, while maintaining decentralized coordination. This is a competitive advantage that no other competitor can imitate.

Overall, from the “Rollup-centric” narrative of 2020 to Strawmap 2026, Ethereum’s narrative evolution teaches one key lesson: scalability cannot rely solely on L2. L1 and L2 must co-evolve synergistically. The eight pathways of L1 zkEVM are a technical mapping of this intellectual shift, all pointing toward one destination: dramatically enhancing Ethereum mainnet without sacrificing decentralization, not rejecting L2 but refining it.

In the next three years, this “Ship of Theseus” will undergo seven forks and replace many “boards” and “sails.” When it reaches its next destination around 2029, we may witness a truly revolutionary “global settlement layer”—fast, secure, private, and still open as from the beginning. Let’s watch this evolution unfold together.