Layla Zulfa
The Ethereum ecosystem is charting an ambitious course for 2026, announcing a significant restructuring of its core development initiatives following a profoundly productive 2025. This strategic evolution, under the banner of "Protocol," aims to streamline efforts and accelerate progress towards enhanced scalability, improved user experience, and the fortification of the network’s foundational layer. Introduced in June 2025 with an initial focus on "Scale L1," "Scale Blobs," and "Improve UX," the Protocol framework has demonstrated remarkable agility, leading to two major network upgrades and substantial advancements across all fronts. The latest announcement signals a refined approach, consolidating efforts into three new, broader tracks: "Scale," "Improve UX," and the newly established "Harden the L1," designed to address the evolving needs and long-term vision of the world’s leading smart contract platform.
The year 2025 stands out as a period of intense development and implementation for Ethereum, marking it as one of the most impactful years at the protocol level since its inception. The community successfully navigated complex upgrades and deployed critical features that laid the groundwork for future expansion. This period of intense activity underscores the decentralized yet highly coordinated nature of Ethereum’s development, driven by a global cohort of researchers, engineers, and community members. The achievements of 2025 are not merely technical milestones but represent tangible progress towards a more accessible, efficient, and robust blockchain infrastructure.
A Pivotal Year: Ethereum’s 2025 Milestones
The initial Protocol framework, established in mid-2025, provided a clear organizational structure, enabling focused development on key areas. This structure proved instrumental in delivering two major network upgrades, alongside numerous other enhancements. Developers and community members alike lauded the rapid pace of innovation and the successful deployment of complex features onto the mainnet.
The first major network upgrade of 2025, Pectra, landed on the mainnet in May. This upgrade was a multifaceted enhancement, introducing several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that brought immediate benefits and set the stage for future innovations. A cornerstone of Pectra was EIP-7702, a groundbreaking proposal that empowers Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs)—the standard user accounts—to temporarily execute smart contract code. This innovation unlocks a host of new possibilities for users, including more sophisticated transaction batching, enabling multiple operations within a single transaction; gas sponsorship, where third parties can cover transaction fees; and simplified social recovery mechanisms, enhancing account security and accessibility. The implications for user experience are profound, moving towards a more flexible and user-friendly interaction model that blurs the lines between simple EOAs and powerful smart contract wallets.
Beyond user-centric features, Pectra also significantly boosted the network’s capacity and validator efficiency. EIP-7691 doubled blob throughput, a critical step in scaling data availability for Layer 2 (L2) rollups. Blobs are ephemeral data segments attached to blocks, offering a cost-effective way for rollups to post transaction data to the mainnet. Doubling this capacity directly translates to lower transaction costs and increased throughput for rollup solutions, which are vital for Ethereum’s scaling strategy. Furthermore, EIP-7251 dramatically raised the maximum effective validator balance from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. This change enhances capital efficiency for large stakers and staking pools, reducing the number of validators required to manage substantial ETH holdings, thereby potentially simplifying staking operations while maintaining network security. Complementing this, EIP-6110 significantly shortened validator onboarding times, making it easier and faster for new validators to join the network and contribute to its security, promoting broader participation in staking.
The second major network upgrade, Fusaka, followed in December, bringing another monumental leap in data availability scaling with EIP-7594, known as PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling). PeerDAS fundamentally changes how validators handle blob data. Instead of requiring all validators to download the entire blob data, PeerDAS enables them to sample small portions of the data, significantly reducing bandwidth requirements. This paradigm shift not only makes data availability more efficient but also enables an eightfold increase in theoretical blob capacity, marking a critical step towards massive scalability for L2s. To gradually integrate this increased capacity, two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks were shipped alongside Fusaka, initiating the ramp-up from an initial target of 6 blobs per block towards much higher targets as the network matures and stabilizes. This phased approach demonstrates a cautious yet determined commitment to sustainable growth.
Between these two landmark upgrades, the Ethereum community also undertook a crucial initiative to enhance the network’s processing capabilities: steadily raising the mainnet gas limit. Starting from an initial 30 million gas units, the limit was gradually increased to 60 million gas units, marking the first significant increase since 2021. This expansion directly translates to a greater number of transactions that can be processed per block, alleviating network congestion and contributing to lower transaction fees for users. This adjustment was carefully calibrated, balancing the need for increased capacity with the imperative to maintain network stability and decentralization by ensuring that node operators can still efficiently process and verify blocks.
Beyond core protocol mechanics, significant strides were made in improving network efficiency and user experience. History expiry was implemented, a vital maintenance procedure that removed pre-Merge data from full nodes. This measure resulted in hundreds of gigabytes of disk space savings for node operators, reducing the hardware requirements for running a full node and fostering greater decentralization by making node operation more accessible. On the user experience (UX) front, the Open Intents Framework reached production, a crucial step towards simplifying complex interactions on the blockchain by allowing users to express their desired outcomes rather than precise transaction parameters. Furthermore, implementations of L1 fast confirmation rules progressed across various consensus clients, promising quicker finality for transactions on the base layer, which is essential for rapid cross-Layer 2 communication and improved user responsiveness. Interoperability standards also saw significant advancements, with proposals such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828 for Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888 for Crosschain Broadcaster moving forward. These standards are foundational for a future where assets and data can flow seamlessly and securely across different Layer 2 solutions and potentially other blockchain networks, simplifying the user journey within the fragmented Web3 landscape.
Refining the Roadmap: Ethereum’s Strategic Reorganization for 2026
While 2025 was undeniably a strong year, the rapid pace of development and the successful completion of several key milestones prompted a re-evaluation of the Protocol’s organizational structure. The initial framework, closely tied to near-term deliverables like increasing the gas limit and shipping PeerDAS, had served its purpose. With these achievements now in the rearview mirror, the Ethereum core development teams recognized an opportunity to reorganize their efforts at a higher, more strategic level, aligning the structure with the long-term vision for the network.
Starting in 2026, Protocol’s work will be organized into three distinct and interconnected tracks:
1. Scale
- Led by: Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani.
- Rationale: The newly unified Scale track consolidates the previous "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives. This consolidation acknowledges a practical reality: the efforts to increase the execution capacity of the Layer 1 (L1) and to expand data availability throughput are inherently intertwined. For instance, further gas limit increases are contingent upon optimizing execution engine performance, while scaling blob capacity depends on complex networking and consensus changes that often touch the same client codebases. By bringing these efforts under a single leadership, the Ethereum community aims to foster greater coordination, accelerate development, and adopt a more holistic view of network scaling challenges. This integrated approach is expected to reduce development friction and enhance overall efficiency.
- Focus Areas: This track will be intensely focused on pushing the boundaries of Ethereum’s transaction processing capabilities. This includes continued research and implementation of further gas limit increases, contingent on ongoing performance optimizations of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and execution clients. It will also drive the continued scaling of data availability through iterative improvements to PeerDAS and other data-sharding related EIPs, with the goal of enabling even higher blob capacities. Efforts will extend to optimizing network propagation, state management, and client performance to ensure that the increased capacity can be handled robustly across the diverse client ecosystem. The long-term implication is a dramatically more scalable base layer that can support a burgeoning ecosystem of Layer 2 solutions and direct L1 usage.
2. Improve UX
- Led by: Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett.
- Rationale: Building on the foundation laid in 2025, the Improve UX track will carry forward its mission with a sharpened focus on two areas deemed highest-leverage for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability. The goal is to make interacting with Ethereum as intuitive and seamless as possible, lowering the barrier to entry for new users and empowering existing ones with more powerful tools.
- Focus Areas:
- Native Account Abstraction (AA): While EIP-7702 was a significant stride, the ultimate vision for account abstraction is to make smart contract wallets the default user experience, entirely removing the need for external bundlers, relayers, or additional gas overhead. This track will champion proposals like EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions), which aim to embed smart account logic directly into the protocol. This means features like multi-signature security, social recovery, and custom transaction logic could become native to all accounts, offering unparalleled flexibility and security. A crucial, forward-looking aspect of this work intersects with post-quantum readiness. Native AA provides a natural migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication schemes, which are vulnerable to quantum computing attacks. This track will also explore and implement proposals designed to make it significantly more gas-efficient to verify quantum-resistant signatures within the EVM, future-proofing Ethereum against emerging cryptographic threats.
- Interoperability: This initiative will continue to build on the groundwork established by the Open Intents Framework, with the overarching goal of achieving seamless, trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions. This means users should be able to move assets and execute transactions across different Layer 2 networks with minimal friction, complexity, or trust assumptions. Continued progress on faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement times directly supports this goal, enabling more rapid and secure communication channels between different parts of the Ethereum ecosystem. The vision is to create a truly unified and fluid user experience, regardless of which L2 or application a user is interacting with.
3. Harden the L1
- Led by: Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery.
- Rationale: The "Harden the L1" track is a brand-new addition, reflecting a critical recognition that as Ethereum scales and evolves, dedicated focus must be placed on preserving and enhancing the core properties that make it valuable: security, decentralization, and resilience. This track underscores a proactive commitment to ensuring the long-term integrity and trustworthiness of the base layer, recognizing that innovation must be balanced with robust foundational strength.
- Focus Areas: This comprehensive track covers several crucial areas:
- Censorship Resistance: This involves exploring and implementing mechanisms to safeguard against transaction censorship, including advancements in enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS). ePBS aims to decentralize the block production process, mitigating the risks associated with Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and enhancing the network’s resistance to external pressures or centralized control.
- Protocol Security: This encompasses a broad range of activities aimed at bolstering the network’s defenses. It includes rigorous formal verification of protocol specifications and client implementations, comprehensive bug bounty programs to identify and fix vulnerabilities, and fostering client diversity to reduce the risk of single-point failures. The goal is to ensure the Ethereum protocol remains impervious to attacks and exploits.
- Decentralization: Efforts here will focus on maintaining and enhancing the decentralized nature of the network. This includes initiatives to reduce the hardware requirements for running full nodes, making participation more accessible to a wider range of individuals and organizations. It also involves promoting a healthy distribution of validators and client software across the network to prevent any single entity or client from gaining undue influence.
- Long-term Sustainability: Addressing challenges like state growth management and optimizing client synchronization times are vital for the network’s enduring health. This track will investigate solutions to ensure that the blockchain remains manageable and efficient for node operators well into the future, preventing excessive resource demands that could lead to centralization. The overall implication of this track is a more robust, secure, and truly decentralized Ethereum, capable of serving as a reliable global settlement layer for decades to come.
Gazing Forward: The Road to Glamsterdam and Beyond
The reorganized Protocol initiatives lay a clear and ambitious roadmap for Ethereum’s continued evolution. The immediate future holds the Glamsterdam network upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026, with Hegotá planned to follow later in the year. These upcoming upgrades are packed with high-impact features, including the introduction of parallel execution, which could dramatically boost transaction processing capabilities, significantly higher gas limits to accommodate growing demand, and the implementation of enshrined PBS to enhance censorship resistance. Further blob scaling will continue to drive down costs for Layer 2s, while advancements in native account abstraction will revolutionize user interaction. Crucially, post-quantum security measures will be integrated, fortifying Ethereum against future cryptographic threats.
The Ethereum community’s commitment to transparency remains steadfast. Regular track-level updates, similar to those provided in the past year, will continue to keep the public informed of progress and ongoing developments. For those interested in following along or getting involved in this monumental undertaking, protocol.ethereum.foundation serves as the central hub for information and engagement. The collaborative spirit that defines Ethereum’s development continues to drive its success, with developers, researchers, and community members worldwide working in concert to "keep shipping" innovations that define the future of decentralized technology. The strategic reorganization for 2026 positions Ethereum not just for incremental improvements, but for a transformative leap forward, solidifying its role as the backbone of the decentralized internet.
