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

2025-11-12

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 c...

---

📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24
https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium

---
BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:

🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, EARN
https://bankless.cc/fraxnet

🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN
https://bankless.cc/unichain

🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK
https://bankless.cc/Mantle

💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP
https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep

💠BIT DIGITAL ($BTBT) | ETH TREASURY
https://bankless.cc/bit-digital
We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ BTBT) for this segment promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at https://bit-digital.com/investors

---
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

---
RESOURCES

Justin Drake
https://x.com/drakefjustin

Lean Ethereum
https://blog.ethereum.org/2025/07/31/lean-ethereum

---
Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures

Comments (3)