Layla Zulfa
Since its inception in June 2025, the Ethereum Protocol initiative has served as a pivotal organizational framework, channeling the vast and complex development efforts of the Ethereum ecosystem into three core strategic pillars: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX. A year marked by relentless innovation and significant upgrades has not only validated this structured approach but also prompted a strategic re-evaluation and refinement of its operational tracks. This comprehensive update reflects on the substantial accomplishments of 2025, details the evolved thinking behind the new organizational structure, and outlines the ambitious trajectory for Protocol in 2026, promising further enhancements in scalability, user experience, and core network resilience.
A Year of Transformative Upgrades: Ethereum’s Protocol Achievements in 2025
The year 2025 stands out as one of Ethereum’s most dynamic and productive periods at the protocol level, witnessing the successful deployment of two major network upgrades and substantial progress across all initially defined strategic fronts. These achievements underscore the Ethereum community’s unwavering commitment to advancing the network’s capabilities, addressing scalability challenges, and enhancing user accessibility.
The first major milestone was the Pectra upgrade, which successfully landed on the Ethereum mainnet in May 2025. Pectra was a multifaceted upgrade designed to deliver a suite of improvements primarily focused on enhancing transaction flexibility and validator efficiency. A cornerstone of Pectra was the implementation of EIP-7702, a groundbreaking proposal that grants Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) the temporary ability to execute smart contract code. This innovation immediately unlocked a host of new possibilities for users and developers, including more efficient transaction batching, the introduction of gas sponsorship mechanisms, and improved pathways for social recovery of accounts. These features collectively marked a significant stride towards making Ethereum more user-friendly and reducing the friction associated with interacting with the blockchain.
Beyond EIP-7702, Pectra also brought crucial scaling improvements. It doubled blob throughput, a critical step in increasing the network’s data availability capacity. Blobs, or "Binary Large Objects," are temporary data segments designed to carry transaction data for Layer 2 (L2) rollups, allowing them to post large amounts of data to the mainnet at a significantly lower cost than traditional L1 transactions. The doubling of throughput in Pectra laid foundational groundwork for more efficient and cost-effective L2 operations, a key component of Ethereum’s long-term scaling strategy. Furthermore, Pectra addressed validator economics and participation by raising the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH (via EIP-7251), allowing existing validators to consolidate their stakes and potentially reduce operational overheads while maintaining network security. Concurrently, EIP-6110 dramatically shortened validator onboarding times, making it easier and faster for new participants to join the network and contribute to its decentralized security model.
The second monumental upgrade of 2025 was Fusaka, deployed in December. Fusaka’s primary achievement was the integration of EIP-7594: PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) onto the mainnet. PeerDAS represents a paradigm shift in how validators handle blob data. Instead of requiring all validators to download full blob data, PeerDAS enables them to sample small portions of it, statistically guaranteeing data availability without imposing massive bandwidth requirements on individual nodes. This innovative approach significantly reduces the hardware burden on validators, thereby promoting decentralization and increasing the network’s resilience. The immediate impact of PeerDAS was an 8x increase in theoretical blob capacity, a leap forward for L2 scaling. Complementing PeerDAS, two BPO (Blob Parameter Only) forks were shipped alongside Fusaka, initiating the gradual ramp-up from the initial 6 blobs per block towards much higher targets, further cementing Ethereum’s commitment to robust data availability for its burgeoning L2 ecosystem.
Underlying Technical Advancements and Ecosystem Growth
Beyond the major network upgrades, 2025 saw several other critical advancements that collectively enhanced Ethereum’s performance and usability. The community successfully and steadily raised the mainnet gas limit from an initial 30 million to 60 million. This was the first significant increase since 2021 and reflected improved client performance and a conservative yet confident approach to expanding L1 transaction capacity. A higher gas limit means more transactions can be processed per block, potentially reducing average transaction fees during periods of moderate network demand and increasing overall network throughput.
In a move addressing long-term state bloat and client synchronization efficiency, History Expiry was implemented, removing pre-Merge data from full nodes. This crucial optimization saves hundreds of gigabytes of disk space for new nodes, making it easier and faster to sync with the network, thus lowering the barrier to entry for running a full node and further supporting decentralization.
On the user experience (UX) front, substantial progress was made. The Open Intents Framework reached production, providing a standardized way for users to express their intentions rather than direct transaction parameters, paving the way for more intuitive and powerful decentralized applications. The L1 fast confirmation rule implementations progressed across various consensus clients, aiming to reduce the perceived latency of transactions on Layer 1, a key factor for improving user interaction with dApps. Furthermore, crucial interoperability standards, such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828 for Interoperable Addresses and Names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster, advanced significantly. These standards are foundational for a future where assets and identities can move seamlessly and securely across different Layer 2s and potentially other blockchain networks, fostering a more cohesive and less fragmented multi-chain ecosystem.
Overall, 2025 was a year of profound technical achievement, laying critical groundwork for Ethereum’s continued evolution. However, the rapid pace of development and the successful completion of several immediate objectives also prompted a strategic reassessment. As the Ethereum Foundation and core developers looked towards the future, it became clear that the original "initiative" structure, while effective for near-term deliverables, needed to evolve into a more flexible and holistic "track" structure to meet the expanding and increasingly interconnected needs of the Ethereum community.
Evolving Strategy for 2026: A Refined Protocol Framework
The initial "Protocol" framework, launched in June 2025, organized efforts around three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX. This structure proved highly effective in guiding the development and successful deployment of Pectra and Fusaka. With these major milestones now behind the community, the opportunity arose to adopt a higher-level organizational approach. Starting in 2026, Protocol’s work is being re-structured into three distinct yet interconnected tracks, designed to provide a more comprehensive and adaptable framework for future development: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
The "Scale" Track: Unifying L1 Execution and Data Availability
Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani
The new "Scale" track represents a strategic consolidation, merging the previously separate "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives into a single, unified effort. This organizational shift is a pragmatic recognition of the deeply intertwined nature of increasing Layer 1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput. Ethereum’s core developers have observed firsthand that enhancements in one area frequently necessitate or impact the other. For instance, increases in the L1 gas limit, which dictate the computational capacity of each block, are inextricably linked to the performance and optimization of the execution engine. Similarly, the scaling of blob data, crucial for L2 operations, depends heavily on fundamental networking and consensus layer changes that often affect the same client codebases responsible for L1 execution.
By coordinating these efforts under a singular "Scale" umbrella, the development process is expected to become more efficient, reducing redundant work and fostering a more holistic perspective on network scaling. This integrated approach allows lead developers to consider the broader system implications of each change, ensuring that scaling solutions are not only effective in isolation but also contribute to a robust and harmonious overall network. The track is focused on pushing the boundaries of Ethereum’s capacity, addressing bottlenecks at both the execution and data availability layers to support the ever-growing demand for decentralized applications and services. This includes continued optimization of client software, research into more efficient transaction processing, and further enhancements to blob throughput and data availability sampling mechanisms.
The "Improve UX" Track: Towards Native Account Abstraction and Seamless Interoperability
Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett
The "Improve UX" track continues the foundational work initiated in 2025, but with a sharpened focus on two critical areas deemed to have the highest leverage for enhancing Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability.
On the front of account abstraction, EIP-7702 in Pectra was an important first step, enabling EOAs to temporarily act as smart contracts. However, the ultimate vision for Ethereum’s user experience involves smart contract wallets becoming the default, operating seamlessly without the need for external bundlers, relayers, or incurring additional gas overheads. This ideal state would revolutionize user interaction, making crypto wallets as intuitive and feature-rich as traditional banking apps, offering features like multi-factor authentication, programmable spending limits, and social recovery natively. Proposals such as EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are actively pushing towards embedding smart account logic directly into the protocol, aiming to make these advanced functionalities a core part of Ethereum’s infrastructure. This work is also strategically aligned with Ethereum’s post-quantum readiness efforts, as native account abstraction provides a natural and flexible migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication methods to quantum-resistant cryptographic schemes, future-proofing the network against potential advances in quantum computing. Complementary to this are various proposals in development designed to make verifying quantum-resistant signatures much more gas-efficient within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), ensuring that security upgrades do not come at the expense of usability or cost.
Regarding interoperability, the track builds upon the strong foundation laid by the Open Intents Framework. The overarching goal remains the realization of seamless, trust-minimized interactions across different Layer 2 solutions. This involves reducing the complexity and risk associated with moving assets and data between various rollups and the L1. Continued progress on achieving faster L1 confirmations and significantly shorter L2 settlement times directly supports this objective, as quicker finality on the base layer and efficient dispute resolution mechanisms are crucial for building truly fluid cross-L2 experiences. The implications for users are profound, promising a future where the distinction between different L2s becomes increasingly invisible, leading to a more unified and accessible decentralized internet.
The "Harden the L1" Track: Fortifying Ethereum’s Core Principles
Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery
"Harden the L1" is a newly introduced track, signifying a dedicated and intensified focus on preserving and strengthening the fundamental properties that make Ethereum valuable in the first place, even as the network undergoes rapid scaling and evolution. This track acknowledges that growth must not come at the expense of core tenets like security, decentralization, and censorship resistance.
This critical track encompasses several key areas:
- Protocol Security and Resilience: This involves continuous auditing, formal verification, and stress testing of core protocol components to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities. It also includes research into advanced cryptographic techniques and consensus mechanism robustness to ensure the network can withstand various attack vectors and maintain integrity under extreme conditions.
- Client Diversity and Decentralization: A robust Ethereum relies on a diverse set of client implementations (e.g., Geth, Erigon, Nethermind for execution; Lighthouse, Prysm, Teku for consensus). This track will actively promote and support client diversity to prevent single points of failure and ensure that no single client dominates the network, which could pose a systemic risk. Efforts will also focus on making it easier and more resource-efficient for individuals to run full nodes, thereby strengthening the network’s decentralization. This includes exploring solutions for state growth management beyond history expiry, such as stateless clients or state rent, to ensure the network remains accessible to ordinary users.
- Censorship Resistance: Ensuring that transactions cannot be arbitrarily censored by powerful entities (like large block producers or validators) is paramount to Ethereum’s value proposition as a neutral, permissionless platform. This track will explore and implement mechanisms to enhance censorship resistance, including research into proposer-builder separation (PBS) designs that minimize the ability of individual actors to influence transaction ordering or exclusion. This includes examining distributed block building and other approaches to prevent powerful entities from manipulating the block space for their own gain or to suppress specific transactions.
- Economic Security and Stability: Maintaining the long-term economic security of the network, particularly the staking mechanism, is vital. This involves continuous analysis of staking economics, validator incentives, and potential risks to the network’s financial stability, ensuring that the rewards for participation align with the security needs of the network and are sustainable over time.
The "Harden the L1" track underscores a mature approach to blockchain development, recognizing that foundational strength is as important as outward-facing features and scalability. It is a commitment to safeguarding Ethereum’s core ethos as it continues to grow and integrate into the global digital economy.
The Road Ahead: Glamsterdam, Hegotá, and Beyond
The ambition for 2026 is clear and continues the high-paced development trajectory of the previous year. Glamsterdam is slated as the next major network upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is expected to bring significant advancements, including the introduction of parallel execution capabilities, which could dramatically increase transaction processing throughput by allowing multiple transactions to be processed concurrently. Glamsterdam will also likely feature significantly higher gas limits beyond the current 60 million, further expanding L1 capacity. A critical component of Glamsterdam is also expected to be progress on enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), moving closer to a more decentralized and censorship-resistant block production process.
Following Glamsterdam, Hegotá is planned for later in 2026. This upgrade is anticipated to build upon the foundations laid by its predecessors, featuring continued blob scaling to further reduce L2 costs and enhance data availability. Hegotá is also expected to bring further progress on censorship resistance mechanisms, refine native account abstraction, and advance post-quantum security measures, solidifying Ethereum’s long-term viability and security profile.
The combined vision for Glamsterdam and Hegotá highlights a comprehensive strategy for 2026: to scale Ethereum’s capacity dramatically, enhance its usability for a broader audience, and fortify its core security and decentralization principles against future challenges.
The Ethereum Foundation is committed to transparency and community engagement throughout this process. Track-level updates, similar to those published in 2025, will continue to be released, providing detailed insights into the progress of each development area. For those interested in following along or actively participating in these crucial advancements, protocol.ethereum.foundation remains the authoritative starting point, offering resources, forums, and pathways for involvement. The message from the core developers is unequivocal: the work continues, driven by a collective determination to keep shipping innovations that secure Ethereum’s future as the world’s leading decentralized platform.
