Layla Zulfa
The Ethereum Foundation has announced a significant evolution in its "Protocol" initiative, initially introduced in June 2025, which will reorganize its core development efforts into three distinct and interconnected tracks for 2026: "Scale," "Improve UX," and the newly established "Harden the L1." This strategic pivot follows a remarkably productive 2025, a year characterized by two major network upgrades—Pectra and Fusaka—and substantial advancements across various fronts aimed at enhancing the network’s capacity and usability. The restructuring signifies a shift from a deliverable-centric approach to a more holistic, high-level strategic framework designed to meet the growing demands of the global blockchain ecosystem and solidify Ethereum’s position as the leading decentralized smart contract platform.
A Retrospective on Ethereum’s Monumental 2025
The year 2025 proved to be one of the most transformative periods in Ethereum’s post-Merge development history, laying crucial groundwork for future scalability and user adoption. The diligent work of core developers culminated in two landmark network upgrades and a series of other critical advancements.
The first major upgrade, Pectra, successfully deployed to the mainnet in May 2025. This upgrade was a multifaceted improvement, most notably introducing EIP-7702, a pivotal Ethereum Improvement Proposal that granted Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) the temporary ability to execute smart contract code. This innovation was a significant stride towards native account abstraction, unlocking a suite of advanced functionalities such as transaction batching (allowing multiple operations in a single transaction), gas sponsorship (where a third party covers transaction fees), and robust social recovery mechanisms for lost keys. These features are critical for enhancing user experience, making Web3 interactions more akin to traditional web services and lowering the barrier to entry for mainstream users.
Beyond EIP-7702, Pectra also delivered substantial scaling improvements. It doubled blob throughput, a crucial measure of the network’s capacity to handle off-chain data for Layer 2 (L2) rollups. Blobs are a core component of Ethereum’s data availability strategy, enabling L2s to post transaction data to the mainnet efficiently and cost-effectively. Doubling this throughput immediately translated to lower transaction costs and increased scalability for rollup solutions, directly benefiting the burgeoning L2 ecosystem. Furthermore, Pectra raised the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH via EIP-7251, a fourfold increase from the previous limit. This adjustment aimed to reduce the operational overhead for large stakers and staking pools, potentially improving capital efficiency and encouraging further participation in network security. Concurrently, EIP-6110 dramatically shortened validator onboarding times, streamlining the process for new validators to join the network and contribute to its decentralization and security.
The momentum continued into the latter half of the year with the Fusaka upgrade, launched in December 2025. Fusaka’s flagship feature was the implementation of EIP-7594, introducing PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) to the mainnet. This revolutionary mechanism allows Ethereum validators to sample blob data rather than requiring them to download the entirety of it. PeerDAS significantly reduces the bandwidth and storage requirements for validators, addressing a critical bottleneck in scaling data availability. Its immediate impact was an 8x increase in theoretical blob capacity, a monumental leap that further solidifies Ethereum’s data availability layer for L2s. Complementing PeerDAS, two BPO (Blob Parameter Only) forks were shipped alongside Fusaka, initiating a gradual ramp-up from the initial 6 blobs per block towards higher targets, ensuring network stability while progressively increasing data throughput.
Beyond these major upgrades, 2025 saw several other vital protocol-level enhancements. The community successfully pushed to steadily raise the mainnet gas limit from an initial 30 million to 60 million, marking the first significant increase since 2021. This substantial expansion of transaction capacity on Layer 1 (L1) directly facilitated more on-chain activity, albeit requiring careful monitoring of node resource consumption. History expiry, a long-anticipated feature, was also implemented, removing pre-Merge data from full nodes and saving hundreds of gigabytes of disk space. This optimization improves node synchronization times and reduces the barrier for running a full node, contributing to network decentralization. On the user experience front, the Open Intents Framework reached production, providing a standardized way for users to express their desired outcomes rather than precise transaction details, paving the way for more intuitive dApp interactions. Progress was also made on L1 fast confirmation rule implementations across consensus clients, aiming to reduce the time users wait for transaction finality. Interoperability standards such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828 for Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888 for Crosschain Broadcaster also advanced, signaling a clear commitment to a seamless multi-chain future.
"The achievements of 2025 underscore the relentless dedication of the Ethereum development community to push the boundaries of what’s possible," commented a spokesperson from the Ethereum Foundation. "From unlocking advanced account features to dramatically increasing data throughput, these milestones are not just technical victories; they are fundamental steps towards a more accessible, efficient, and robust global computing platform. The progress made in scaling and UX has directly addressed some of the most pressing challenges faced by users and developers alike, setting a strong precedent for the strategic evolution we are now implementing for 2026."
Evolving for an Impactful 2026: A Refined Strategic Framework
While 2025 was a year of successful execution against specific deliverables, the road ahead necessitates a more integrated and higher-level organizational structure. The initial "Protocol" framework, with its three initiatives (Scale L1, Scale Blobs, Improve UX), effectively guided the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades. However, with those critical milestones now behind the community, the strategic thinking has evolved to address the increasingly interconnected and complex challenges of Ethereum’s future.
Starting in 2026, the "Protocol" initiative will be structured into three overarching tracks, each led by a dedicated team of prominent researchers and developers:
1. Scale Track:
- Led by: Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani
- Focus: This track unifies the previously separate "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives into a single, cohesive effort. This consolidation acknowledges the deep interdependence between increasing L1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput. For instance, further gas limit increases are intricately tied to advancements in execution engine performance, while blob scaling relies heavily on coordinated networking and consensus layer changes that often affect the same client codebases. By bringing these efforts under one umbrella, the "Scale" track aims to foster greater coordination, accelerate development, and ensure a more holistic approach to network expansion.
- Implications: The "Scale" track will be instrumental in realizing the full vision of Danksharding, moving beyond PeerDAS to further enhance data availability. It will also explore advanced L1 execution optimizations, potentially including parallel execution (a key feature for Glamsterdam), to significantly boost transaction processing capabilities. Success in this track directly translates to lower L2 transaction fees, higher network throughput, and a more responsive user experience across the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Developers can anticipate a more predictable and powerful underlying infrastructure for building decentralized applications.
2. Improve UX Track:
- Led by: Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett
- Focus: Carrying forward the spirit of last year’s "Improve UX" initiative, this track sharpens its focus on two areas deemed highest-leverage for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability.
- Native Account Abstraction: Building on the foundation laid by EIP-7702, the ultimate goal is to establish smart contract wallets as the default user experience, eliminating the need for bundlers, relayers, or additional gas overhead. Proposals like EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are actively exploring ways to embed smart account logic directly into the protocol, simplifying user interactions, enhancing security features (e.g., multi-factor authentication, programmable spending limits), and enabling gas sponsorship natively. This work is also crucial for post-quantum readiness, as native account abstraction provides a natural and robust migration path away from the currently prevalent ECDSA-based authentication schemes, protecting user assets against potential future quantum computing threats. Complementary efforts are underway to make verification of quantum-resistant signatures much more gas-efficient within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
- Interoperability: The track aims to build upon the advancements of the Open Intents Framework, striving for seamless, trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions. This includes continued progress on faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement times, which are critical for enabling fluid asset transfers and communication between various L2 solutions and the mainnet. The vision is to create an ecosystem where users perceive the multitude of L2s as a single, unified network, abstracting away the underlying complexity.
- Implications: A successful "Improve UX" track will dramatically lower the barrier to entry for new users, making Ethereum-based applications as intuitive and secure as traditional online services. It will foster greater innovation in wallet technology and dApp design, leading to a more vibrant and accessible Web3 experience. For businesses, this means a wider potential user base and simplified integration with blockchain technology.
3. Harden the L1 Track:
- Led by: Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery
- Focus: This is a new and critically important track, reflecting a dedicated focus on ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it rigorously preserves its foundational properties of security, decentralization, and censorship resistance.
- Decentralization: This includes ongoing efforts to maintain client diversity, optimize node resource requirements, and mitigate risks associated with staking pool concentration. Ensuring that running a full node remains accessible to a wide range of participants is paramount for the network’s long-term health.
- Censorship Resistance: With the rise of Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and increasing transaction traffic, mechanisms to ensure that no single entity can unduly influence block inclusion or transaction ordering are vital. This includes exploring and implementing solutions like enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS).
- Security: Beyond post-quantum readiness, this encompasses continuous auditing of the protocol, fostering robust client implementations, and addressing potential attack vectors as the network grows in complexity.
- Long-term Sustainability: This involves research into economic models, resource consumption efficiency, and environmental impact, ensuring Ethereum’s viability for decades to come.
- Implications: The "Harden the L1" track is a proactive measure to safeguard Ethereum’s core values against the challenges inherent in scaling a global, decentralized network. Its success ensures that the network remains resilient, trustworthy, and free from undue influence, which is fundamental for both existing users and future institutional adoption. It underscores Ethereum’s commitment to its founding principles amidst rapid technological advancement.
Looking Ahead: Glamsterdam and Hegotà – The Path Through 2026
The strategic restructuring for 2026 provides a clear roadmap for upcoming network upgrades. Glamsterdam is slated as the next major network upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is poised to deliver transformative features, including parallel execution, which promises to significantly boost the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s processing capabilities by allowing multiple transactions to be processed concurrently. Glamsterdam will also focus on significantly higher gas limits and the implementation of enshrined PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation). Enshrined PBS aims to move the separation of block proposer and block builder roles from an off-chain market to a core protocol mechanism, enhancing censorship resistance, reducing MEV concentration risks, and improving validator fairness.
Following Glamsterdam, Hegotà is planned for later in 2026. This upgrade will continue the relentless pursuit of blob scaling, further expanding data availability for L2s. It will also advance efforts in censorship resistance, build upon the progress of native account abstraction, and bolster post-quantum security measures, reinforcing the themes of the newly defined development tracks.
"The redefined tracks for 2026 reflect a maturing ecosystem and our commitment to tackling complex, interconnected challenges with a unified vision," stated a lead researcher involved in the "Scale" track. "By integrating L1 execution and data availability, for instance, we ensure that scaling efforts are holistic and mutually reinforcing, leading to a more robust and efficient network for everyone." Another developer from the "Improve UX" track added, "User experience is paramount. We believe native account abstraction and seamless interoperability will be the keys to unlocking mass adoption and making Web3 truly intuitive. Our focus for 2026 is to bring these foundational improvements to fruition, directly impacting millions of users globally."
The broader implications of this strategic shift are profound. By systematically addressing scalability, user experience, and core L1 hardening, Ethereum is not only enhancing its technical capabilities but also solidifying its competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape. These advancements are expected to attract a new wave of developers and users, foster innovation in DeFi, NFTs, and enterprise blockchain solutions, and ultimately cement Ethereum’s role as the foundational layer for a decentralized future. The commitment to structured, long-term development, as evidenced by this strategic overhaul, instills confidence in the network’s ability to evolve and adapt to future demands.
The Ethereum Foundation encourages community engagement and transparency throughout this journey. Track-level updates will continue to be published regularly, providing detailed insights into the ongoing progress of each initiative. For those looking to follow along or contribute to these pivotal developments, protocol.ethereum.foundation remains the primary hub for information and involvement.
The message from the core developers is clear: the work to build a more scalable, user-friendly, and secure Ethereum continues unabated. The community is poised to keep shipping innovations that will define the future of decentralized technology.
