But Ethereum now sees as urgent the replacement of every vulnerable quantum coin with a secure quantum alternative, Buterin said, including an overhaul of the cheap data storage that rollups depend on, the Layer 2 networks built on top of Ethereum.
Privacy was elevated to what Buterin called a “first-class goal” rather than an afterthought. The plan calls for designing core network components so that private, unmediated transactions can pass through them by default.
The way the network self-verifies itself is also evolving. Instead of each node rerunning each transaction, Ethereum plans to rely on recursive STARKs. This cryptographic proof method allows a node to verify a compact proof that work was done correctly, rather than repeating it. This change aims to make the network faster and lighter to operate.
As such, the change Buterin flagged as the most disruptive concerns what Ethereum calls state. State is the current memory of a blockchain, the complete snapshot of everything that exists on a network at a specific time.
Think of it as the history of every account balance and all the data in those contracts (like who owns which NFT, how many are in a lending pool, every ledger of tokens), starting from the last block.
