leanvm

1. Introduction: The Ethereum Foundation establishes a post-quantum dedicated group
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has officially established a Post-Quantum (PQ) group – a group dedicated to post-quantum cryptography. At the same time, EF clearly stated that the cybersecurity of the Ethereum network against threats from quantum computers is the top strategic priority in its long-term strategy.
This announcement was made around January 23, 2026, by prominent researcher Justin Drake (@drakefjustin) via a post on X, marking the transition from theoretical research to practical implementation.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, highly praised the achievements of the Lean Ethereum team in 2025. In his recent statement, he emphasized the significant progress in ensuring scalability, decentralization, and resilience of the network. A key innovation was leanVM — a minimalist virtual machine optimized for ZK-proofs. It promises to reduce scaling costs and accelerate recursion tenfold, which is an important step towards improving Ethereum's efficiency.