Justin Drake, a prominent researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, has unveiled his vision for the next decade.

His vision of “lean Ethereum” will aspire to achieve “extreme performance” with minimum complexity without compromising security or decentralization. 

The quantum threat 

In his lengthy social media post, Drake has pointed to such key advantages of Ethereum as 100% uptime and unmatched client diversity. The second-largest blockchain network boasts a whopping $130 billion worth of economic security. Drake expects Ethereum to top $1 trillion in the future since he is convinced that the chain will function as the “bedrock” of the internet of value.

Drake has noted that Ethereum will have to survive a potential threat posed by quantum computers that could break cryptography. 

Since he views Ethereum as a global public good, it should remain online no matter what. 

You Might Also Like

Draker has proposed replacing older cryptographic primitives (like BLS or KZG) with hash-based alternatives. According to the developer, hash-based cryptography offers a “compelling” response to such megatrends as the rise of SNARKs and the growing threat of quantum computing. 

Aggressive scaling 

Drake does not believe that Ethereum has to choose between scaling and decentralization. The “beast mode” is meant to combine the best of both worlds. 

The ambitious scaling strategy includes real-time zkVMs for faster smart contracts and data availability sampling (DAS) for seamlessly verifying massive amounts of data. 

The network is expected to see “low-hanging fruit” performance boosts in the near future. In the long term, layer-1 is expected to reach 10,000 transactions per second. Meanwhile, layer-2 solutions could potentially achieve 1 million TPS. 

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake unveiled the “Lean Ethereum” proposal on July 31 that reframes the base layer around the imperatives of survivability against nation-state and quantum threats and orders-of-magnitude performance gains without sacrificing decentralization.

The new guidelines were dubbed “fort mode” and “beast mode,” respectively.

Published on the Ethereum Foundation blog, the vision argued that the network can simultaneously harden security and radically scale by anchoring the mainnet in hash-based cryptography and restructuring all three protocol sublayers, which are consensus, data, and execution.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Drake recently addressed the concept during an ETH-focused event in Berlin.

Fort mode and beast mode

Drake’s security thesis highlights that Ethereum must run for decades, even centuries, under adversarial conditions. 

According to the roadmap, “if the internet is up, Ethereum is up” is the goal. On performance, Lean Ethereum targets roughly 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) on mainnet via aggressive vertical scaling and approximately 1 million TPS on layer-2 (L2) blockchains via expansive horizontal scaling. 

He added that enabling “moon-math” is no longer aspirational, suggesting real-time zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs) for execution and data availability sampling (DAS) for data throughput. 

A complementary usability aim is full-chain verification on consumer devices, such as browsers, phones, and wallets.

Three “lean” sublayers

Lean Ethereum proposes coordinated upgrades across three different layers. The first is “Lean consensus,” or Beacon Chain 2.0, focused on hardening the Beacon Chain for maximum security and decentralization, with near-instant finality measured in seconds.

Lean data (Blobs 2.0) is the second layer. The goal is to enable post-quantum “blobs” with granular sizing to preserve a calldata-like developer experience while boosting throughput.

Lastly, Lean execution (EVM 2.0) consists of a minimal, SNARK-friendly instruction set that preserves EVM compatibility and network effects but accelerates proving and verification.

Together, these changes aim to deliver “performance abundance” under non-negotiable continuity and simplicity constraints.

Hash-based crypto as the standard fabric

Lean Ethereum treats the hash function as the fundamental primitive across layers. Aggregate signatures in consensus supplanting Boneh-Lynn-Shacham (BLS), hash-based commitments replacing Kate, Zaverucha, and Goldberg (KZG) in the data layer, and hash-centric zkVMs streamlining execution verification. 

The approach is designed to simultaneously future-proof against quantum adversaries while harmonizing with the rapid rise of SNARKs across the stack.

Drake said that Lean Ethereum is as much an engineering aesthetic as a roadmap. The concept is based on minimal modules, encapsulated complexity, formal verification, and provable security and optimality. 

The emphasis on “lean craft” seeks to prune legacy complexity while standardizing on primitives that are easier to reason and verify.

Mentioned in this article

Musical artist Drake made a lyrical reference to Bitcoin (BTC) in a new song released on Saturday titled “What Did I Miss?”

The hip-hop artist previously wagered $1 million in BTC on the outcome of the 2022 Super Bowl, the championship American football game, between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams.

Drake’s reference to Bitcoin, and the hallmark volatility of the supply-capped asset, appears in the first verse of the song:

“I look at this shit like a BTC, could be down this week, then I’m up next week. I don’t give a fuck if you love me. I don’t give a fuck if you like me. Askin’ me ‘How did it feel?’ Can’t say it didn’t surprise me.”

References to Bitcoin in songs, long-running television shows, and other popular art forms signal the digital asset is growing in popularity, as it breaks into mainstream culture and inches toward mass adoption.

Related: Samson Mow wants Bitcoin in ‘all of Europe,’ receives invite to France

When will Bitcoin mass adoption finally happen?

In 2022, Bitcoin mining hardware provider Blockware predicted that global adoption would hit 10% by 2030. The company based its forecast on the adoption curve of previous paradigm-shifting technologies including automobiles, electricity, and the Internet.

River, a BTC financial services company, released a report in March 2025 showing that approximately 4% of the global population holds BTC, and the digital currency still accounts for less than 1% of its total addressable market in terms of adoption.

The report also found that developed nations tended to have higher rates of adoption than developing countries.

Institutional Bitcoin adoption has been a major theme of the current market cycle, with companies like Strategy and Metaplanet reorienting themselves to become Bitcoin treasury companies.

Other institutions have taken on small amounts of Bitcoin to protect their corporate reserves from inflation, hedge against geopolitical risks, and protect against the fragmentation created by de-globalization.

Bitcoin investment vehicles, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs), have been major drivers of institutional and retail exposure to Bitcoin, which remove the technical barrier to entry of self-custody and onchain transactions.

Magazine: Baby boomers worth $79T are finally getting on board with Bitcoin

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/drake-mentions-bitcoin-in-new-song-what-did-i-miss/feed/ 0 46010 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/#respond Fri, 16 May 2025 13:55:21 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/51-attack-on-ethereum-more-difficult-than-on-bitcoin-justin-drake/

Ethereum Merge architect Justin Drake told Cointelegraph that he believes it would be cheaper to launch a 51% attack on Bitcoin than on Ethereum.

Drake said it would be “much cheaper to 51% attack Bitcoin” and that it would cost “on the order of $10 billion.”

Drake led work on Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) implementation and was a principal architect in the Merge (the full PoS transition event). His remarks echo a May 14 X post by Grant Hummer, the co-founder of Ethereum-focused marketing and product company Etherealize.

In the post, Hummer said that Bitcoin “is completely screwed because of its security budget.”

Hummer claimed it would cost $8 billion to run a successful 51% attack, and he expects a successful attack to be “virtually certain” when the cost slips to $2 billion. A 51% attack occurs when a single entity or group controls over 50% of a blockchain network’s mining or staking power, gaining power over the network. Hummer added:

“This will become blindingly obvious over the next decade. ETH is the only truly decentralized crypto-asset that can become the internet’s [store of value].“

Related: Coin Metrics research shows BTC and ETH are immune to 51% attacks

Ethereum attack would cost much more

Drake explained that “to have 100% control of the chain, you need 50% + 1 of stake.” He said that it would be extremely difficult and expensive, but far from impossible:

“A rich nation state can probably pull it off.“

At the time of writing, there was 34,168,987 staked Ether (ETH) worth nearly $89.6 billion. Consequently, half of all ETH has a current value of almost $44.8 billion.

Still, a much higher investment would likely be needed. Ether has a current market cap of $316 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of $25 billion (just over 8% of the market cap).

The ETH needed for an attack is worth nearly 14.2% of the market cap and 180% of the 24-hour trading volume. An undertaking of that size would likely cause a significant ETH price appreciation, further increasing the cost of the attack.

Related: Big miners pose a growing existential threat to Bitcoin

Ethereum’s last line of defense

Matan Sitbon, the founder and CEO of blockchain interoperability developer Lightblocks, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum has an additional feature to defend against such attacks.

“Ethereum’s ultimate security lies not solely in cryptography or protocol rules, but in the community’s powerful social and economic coordination mechanisms,“ he said.

Drake also highlighted another advantage that he believes Ethereum has over Bitcoin. He explained that “if there is a 51% attack, the social layer can identify the attacker and socially slash it.”

“This is a superpower of PoS that is not available with PoW,“ he added.

Drake’s statement refers to the social layer, meaning the network’s human supermajority, which decides which software to run. Bitcoin’s simpler proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism has a smaller attack surface and longer reliability track record, but it lacks this feature.

Pavel Yashin, Researcher at P2P.org, told Cointelegraph that “if the centralization is detected,” the community could resolve it with a new fork. The old token would end up being delisted, and the compromised chain would fall into irrelevancy.

Hassan Khan, CEO at Bitcoin liquidity protocol Ordeez, told Cointelegraph that “the debate around the feasibility of a 51% attack remains open-ended — largely because while theoretically possible, in practice the barriers are extremely high.”

He said that for Bitcoin, the necessary amount of computing power and energy “makes a sustained attack highly improbable,” while for Ethereum, “PoS introduces additional economic and governance deterrents.”

Magazine: Danger signs for Bitcoin as retail abandons it to institutions: Sky Wee