Layla Zulfa
Ethereum, the world’s leading programmable blockchain, has announced a significant restructuring of its core development initiatives under its "Protocol" framework, pivoting to three distinct tracks for 2026: "Scale," "Improve UX," and the newly introduced "Harden the L1." This strategic evolution follows a highly productive 2025, which saw the successful deployment of two major network upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka, alongside a substantial increase in the network’s transactional capacity and significant strides in user experience and data availability. The shift reflects a maturing approach to development, consolidating intertwined efforts and dedicating explicit focus to the foundational security and resilience of the Layer 1 blockchain amidst aggressive scaling targets.
The "Protocol" initiative, initially launched in June 2025, organized Ethereum’s ambitious development roadmap around three strategic pillars: "Scale L1," "Scale Blobs," and "Improve UX." This framework proved instrumental in guiding the network through a period of intense innovation and deployment. Now, with key milestones achieved, the core development teams are adapting their structure to address future challenges and opportunities more holistically, aiming for an "impactful 2026" characterized by sustained progress towards a more scalable, user-friendly, and robust Ethereum.
A Retrospective on Ethereum’s Groundbreaking 2025
The year 2025 stands out as one of Ethereum’s most transformative years at the protocol level, marked by the successful implementation of critical upgrades and substantial advancements across all strategic fronts. The core development community delivered on ambitious targets, significantly enhancing the network’s capabilities.
The first major network upgrade of the year, Pectra, successfully landed on the mainnet in May 2025. This upgrade was a multifaceted enhancement, introducing several Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) designed to boost both functionality and efficiency. Central to Pectra was EIP-7702, a pivotal change that granted Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) the temporary ability to execute smart contract code. This innovation was a precursor to broader account abstraction, immediately unlocking functionalities such as transaction batching, gas sponsorship (where a third party covers transaction fees), and streamlined social recovery mechanisms, thereby significantly improving the user experience for EOA holders.
Beyond user-centric features, Pectra also addressed fundamental scaling aspects. EIP-7691 notably doubled the network’s blob throughput, a crucial step in expanding data availability for Layer 2 scaling solutions. Furthermore, EIP-7251 raised the maximum effective validator balance to an impressive 2,048 ETH, a move aimed at enhancing staking flexibility and potentially increasing validator participation. Complementing this, EIP-6110 dramatically shortened validator onboarding times, reducing the barrier to entry for new stakers and contributing to the decentralization and security of the consensus layer.
Building on the momentum of Pectra, Fusaka followed swiftly, deploying to the mainnet in December 2025. This upgrade brought the highly anticipated EIP-7594, known as PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling), to fruition. PeerDAS represents a paradigm shift in how validators handle blob data. Instead of requiring validators to download full blob data, they now sample it, significantly reducing bandwidth requirements for individual nodes. This architectural change unlocked an astounding 8x increase in theoretical blob capacity, laying a robust foundation for future scaling of Layer 2 networks. Accompanying Fusaka were two BPO (Blob Parameter Only) forks, which initiated the incremental ramp-up from the initial 6 blobs per block towards much higher targets, strategically managed to ensure network stability while expanding capacity.
Beyond these two monumental upgrades, 2025 saw other critical developments. The Ethereum community proactively and steadily raised the mainnet gas limit, increasing it from an initial 30 million to the current 60 million. This was the first significant increase since 2021 and directly translated into greater transactional throughput for the network, accommodating higher demand. Additionally, History Expiry, a long-planned initiative, progressed significantly, removing pre-Merge data from full nodes. This measure effectively saved hundreds of gigabytes of disk space, making it more feasible to run full nodes and contributing to the long-term sustainability and decentralization of the network.
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 various consensus clients, aiming to reduce the time users wait for transaction finality. Furthermore, critical interoperability standards such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved forward, signaling a concerted effort to foster seamless interaction across the burgeoning multi-chain ecosystem.
Evolving the Protocol Strategy for an Impactful 2026
While 2025 was undeniably a strong year, the core development teams recognized the need for an evolved organizational structure to match the increasingly complex and intertwined needs of the Ethereum community. The initial framing of "Scale L1," "Scale Blobs," and "Improve UX" served well for immediate deliverables like gas limit increases and PeerDAS deployment. However, with these milestones achieved, the opportunity arose to adopt a higher-level, more integrated approach to future development.
Starting in 2026, Protocol’s work will be streamlined into three overarching tracks:
1. The "Scale" Track: Unifying Capacity Expansion
Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani
The newly unified "Scale" track merges the previous "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives into a single, cohesive effort. This consolidation is a pragmatic recognition of the deep interdependencies between increasing Layer 1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput. For instance, increases in the network’s gas limit are directly tied to the performance capabilities of execution engines, while further blob scaling relies heavily on advancements in networking and consensus layer changes that often involve the same client codebases. By coordinating these efforts under a single leadership, the Ethereum core developers aim to accelerate progress, reduce potential friction points, and foster a more holistic view of the network’s overall scaling strategy.
This track is poised to tackle the next frontiers of scalability, including further gas limit adjustments, optimizing client performance, and deploying advanced data availability solutions beyond PeerDAS. The ambition is to ensure Ethereum can accommodate the ever-growing demand from Layer 2 solutions and direct Layer 1 users, without compromising on security or decentralization.
2. The "Improve UX" Track: Towards Seamless User Interaction
Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett
The "Improve UX" track continues its mission from the previous year but with a refined focus on two areas deemed highest-leverage for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability. These areas are critical to onboarding the next wave of users and enabling a truly seamless multi-chain experience.
On the front of native account abstraction (AA), EIP-7702 was a crucial first step, but the long-term vision is to establish smart contract wallets as the default, eliminating the need for bundlers, relayers, or additional gas overhead. This involves embedding smart account logic directly into the protocol. Proposals such as EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are at the forefront of this effort, seeking to integrate AA natively, thereby simplifying user interactions and enhancing security features like multi-factor authentication and social recovery without third-party dependencies. Critically, this work also intersects with post-quantum readiness. Native AA provides a natural and robust migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication methods, which are vulnerable to quantum computing threats. Complementary to this are ongoing proposals aimed at making the verification of quantum-resistant signatures significantly more gas-efficient within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Regarding interoperability, the track will build upon the foundation laid by the Open Intents Framework. The overarching goal remains the realization of seamless, trust-minimized interactions across different Layer 2 solutions. Continued progress on faster Layer 1 confirmations and shorter Layer 2 settlement times are direct enablers of this vision, reducing latency and enhancing the user experience across the expanding Ethereum ecosystem. This includes efforts to standardize cross-chain messaging and asset transfers, ensuring that users and applications can move fluidly between various scaling solutions.
3. The "Harden the L1" Track: Fortifying Ethereum’s Core
Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery
The introduction of "Harden the L1" as a dedicated new track underscores a strategic commitment to safeguarding the fundamental properties that define Ethereum’s value proposition. As the network scales and evolves at an accelerated pace, ensuring its security, decentralization, censorship resistance, and long-term viability becomes paramount. This track is designed to provide dedicated focus and resources to these critical, often overlooked, aspects of protocol development.
This covers several vital areas:
- Protocol Security and Resilience: This involves continuous auditing, formal verification, and stress testing of core protocol components to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. It also includes research into advanced cryptographic techniques and robust consensus mechanisms to withstand emerging threats.
- Decentralization Maintenance: As the network grows, efforts must be made to ensure that client diversity is preserved and enhanced. This track will focus on supporting various client teams, fostering a healthy ecosystem of independent implementations, and monitoring potential centralization vectors within the network.
- Censorship Resistance: Protecting the network’s ability to process all valid transactions, regardless of origin or content, is a core tenet of Ethereum. This track will explore and implement mechanisms, such as enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and other credible neutrality measures, to prevent transaction censorship at various layers of the protocol stack.
- Long-Term Protocol Sustainability: This includes research and development into state growth management, efficient data storage solutions, and optimizing the network’s overall resource consumption to ensure that Ethereum remains accessible and operable for decades to come, even as its history expands.
- Economic Security: Analyzing and improving the economic incentives for validators and other network participants to ensure the long-term security and stability of the network, particularly in the face of increasingly sophisticated attacks.
Looking Ahead: Glamsterdam and Hegotá in 2026
The ambitious trajectory for Ethereum continues into 2026, with two major network upgrades already in the pipeline. Glamsterdam is the next significant upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is expected to introduce groundbreaking features like parallel execution, which promises to dramatically increase transaction throughput by allowing multiple transactions to be processed concurrently. It will also likely include significantly higher gas limits, further expanding the network’s capacity. A key component of Glamsterdam will be continued progress on enshrined PBS, a crucial step towards mitigating MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) related centralization risks and enhancing censorship resistance.
Following Glamsterdam, Hegotá is planned for later in the year, continuing the relentless pursuit of innovation. Hegotá is anticipated to further advance blob scaling, pushing the boundaries of data availability. It will also likely include critical developments in native account abstraction and further solidify the network’s post-quantum security measures, ensuring Ethereum’s resilience against future cryptographic threats.
The clear ambition across these planned upgrades and the newly structured development tracks is to deliver a more powerful, user-friendly, and secure Ethereum. The core development teams are committed to transparency, promising to continue publishing track-level updates regularly. For those interested in following along or getting involved, protocol.ethereum.foundation remains the authoritative starting point.
In summary, Ethereum’s core developers are not merely resting on the laurels of a highly successful 2025 but are actively adapting their organizational strategy to tackle the next generation of challenges. By unifying scaling efforts, hyper-focusing on key UX improvements like native account abstraction and interoperability, and explicitly dedicating a track to hardening the Layer 1, Ethereum is positioning itself for sustained growth and resilience, reinforcing its foundational role in the decentralized future. The community’s collective mantra remains clear: "Let’s keep shipping."
