Layla Zulfa
Following a highly productive 2025, Ethereum has announced a significant evolution of its core development strategy, dubbed "Protocol," reorganizing its efforts into three distinct and impactful tracks for 2026: Scale, Improve UX, and the newly introduced Harden the L1. This strategic pivot reflects a maturing ecosystem and a proactive approach to addressing the complex demands of a global decentralized network, aiming for enhanced efficiency, robustness, and accessibility. The original "Protocol" initiative, launched in June 2025, initially structured work around three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX. The new framework consolidates and sharpens these objectives, laying the groundwork for ambitious network upgrades like Glamsterdam and Hegotá in the coming year.
A Retrospective on Ethereum’s Monumental 2025 Achievements
The year 2025 stands out as a pivotal period for Ethereum’s foundational protocol, marked by the successful deployment of two major network upgrades and substantial progress across all strategic fronts. These achievements have not only enhanced the network’s technical capabilities but also reinforced its position as a leading platform for decentralized applications and digital assets.
The first major milestone was the Pectra upgrade, which successfully landed on the Ethereum mainnet in May 2025. This upgrade introduced several critical Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) designed to enhance flexibility and scalability. Central to Pectra was EIP-7702, a groundbreaking proposal that empowers Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily execute smart contract code. This innovation unlocks a host of advanced functionalities previously restricted to smart contract wallets, including efficient transaction batching, where multiple operations can be processed in a single transaction; gas sponsorship, allowing third parties to cover transaction fees for users; and robust social recovery mechanisms, significantly improving account security and user convenience. Pectra also dramatically boosted the network’s data processing capabilities by doubling blob throughput via EIP-7691. Blobs, an integral component of Ethereum’s scaling strategy, provide a dedicated data availability layer for Layer 2 (L2) solutions, enabling them to post large amounts of data at significantly lower costs than traditional calldata. This increase directly benefits rollup-centric scaling, facilitating faster and cheaper transactions on L2s. Furthermore, EIP-7251 raised the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, a move designed to enhance capital efficiency for stakers and potentially increase the network’s total staked ETH, thereby strengthening its security. Complementing this, EIP-6110 dramatically shortened validator onboarding times, making it easier and quicker for new validators to join the network, fostering greater decentralization and resilience.
The momentum continued with the Fusaka upgrade, deployed in December 2025, which introduced another cornerstone of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap: PeerDAS (EIP-7594) to the mainnet. PeerDAS, or Peer Data Availability Sampling, represents a crucial advancement in how validators handle blob data. Instead of requiring all validators to download the entirety of blob data, PeerDAS enables them to sample small portions of it to cryptographically verify its availability. This innovative approach significantly reduces bandwidth requirements for individual validators, making node operation more accessible and less resource-intensive. Critically, PeerDAS paves the way for an eightfold increase in theoretical blob capacity, meaning L2s can eventually process vastly more transactions. Alongside Fusaka, two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks were shipped, initiating the gradual ramp-up from the initial six blobs per block towards much higher targets, strategically increasing data availability as the network infrastructure matures.
Beyond these major network upgrades, the Ethereum community also made substantial progress on other vital fronts throughout 2025. The mainnet gas limit was steadily raised from an initial 30 million to an unprecedented 60 million, marking the first significant increase since 2021. This expansion directly translates to a higher transaction throughput on Layer 1, offering immediate benefits in terms of network capacity and potentially lower gas fees during periods of moderate demand. Another significant achievement was History Expiry, which removed pre-Merge historical data from full nodes, resulting in hundreds of gigabytes of disk space savings. This initiative is crucial for maintaining the accessibility and efficiency of running full nodes, preventing unchecked data growth from becoming a barrier to entry for node operators and thus supporting network decentralization.
User experience (UX) also saw considerable advancements. The Open Intents Framework reached production readiness, providing a standardized way for users to express their desired outcomes rather than needing to manually specify every transaction detail, promising a more intuitive and streamlined interaction with decentralized applications. Implementations of L1 fast confirmation rules progressed across various consensus clients, aiming to reduce the time users wait for transaction finality, particularly important for high-frequency trading and interactive applications. Furthermore, key interoperability standards such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved forward. These standards are foundational for enabling seamless communication and asset transfer across different L2s and potentially other blockchain networks, laying the groundwork for a truly interconnected decentralized ecosystem.
Evolving for 2026: A Refined Strategic Framework
While 2025 was undeniably a year of robust execution, the Ethereum core development teams recognized the need for an evolved organizational structure to address the future complexities and opportunities. The initial "Protocol" framework, with its focus on near-term deliverables like increasing the gas limit, shipping PeerDAS, and improving general UX, served its purpose exceptionally well in guiding the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades. However, with these significant milestones achieved, the community now has the opportunity to adopt a higher-level, more integrated approach to its strategic initiatives.
Starting in 2026, Protocol’s work will be organized into three distinct, yet interconnected, tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1. This restructuring signifies a shift from a task-oriented approach to a more holistic, long-term vision for Ethereum’s development.
The "Scale" Track: Unifying Layer 1 Execution and Data Availability
The newly consolidated "Scale" track, co-led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani, represents a strategic merger of the previously separate Scale L1 and Scale Blobs initiatives. This unification acknowledges a critical practical reality: the efforts to increase Layer 1 execution capacity and expand data availability throughput are inherently intertwined. Increases in the L1 gas limit, for instance, are deeply dependent on the performance and optimization of execution engines. Similarly, the scaling of blob data, which underpins the efficiency of L2s, relies heavily on advancements in networking and consensus layer changes that often affect the same client codebases.
By coordinating these efforts under a single, unified track, Ethereum aims to achieve greater efficiency, accelerate development, and reduce potential points of friction. This integrated approach fosters a more holistic view of the network’s scaling challenges, allowing for synchronized development and deployment of interdependent features. The Scale track will focus comprehensively on maximizing both the computational capacity of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and the data bandwidth available for L2 rollups, ensuring that Ethereum can support an ever-growing number of users and transactions without compromising its core principles. This includes further refinements to execution client performance, continued optimization of the data availability layer, and exploring advanced scaling techniques that consider the entire network stack.
The "Improve UX" Track: Native Account Abstraction and Seamless Interoperability
The "Improve UX" track, led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, builds upon the foundations laid in the previous year, but with a sharper, more concentrated focus on two areas deemed critical for Ethereum’s mainstream usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability. These areas are key to transforming Ethereum from a powerful, yet often complex, developer-centric platform into a user-friendly global computer accessible to billions.
On the front of account abstraction (AA), EIP-7702 was a crucial first step, introducing smart contract-like capabilities to EOAs. However, the ultimate vision for Ethereum’s UX involves smart contract wallets becoming the default standard, operating seamlessly without the need for bundlers, relayers, or incurring additional gas overhead. This ambitious goal is being pursued through innovative proposals such as EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions), which aim to embed smart account logic directly into the Ethereum protocol itself. Native AA would allow for features like multisignature wallets, spending limits, gas abstraction (paying gas in any token), and social recovery to be built directly into the user’s wallet experience, making it dramatically more secure and intuitive. This work also strategically intersects with post-quantum readiness, as native AA provides a natural and robust migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication methods, preparing the network for potential future cryptographic breakthroughs. Complementary to this, several proposals are in active development to make the verification of quantum-resistant signatures much more gas-efficient within the EVM, ensuring future-proof security without exorbitant transaction costs.
Regarding interoperability, the track will continue to build on the foundation established by the Open Intents Framework. The overarching goal remains the creation of seamless, trust-minimized interactions across various Layer 2 solutions. Achieving this will unlock the full potential of the rollup-centric roadmap, allowing users and applications to move assets and data effortlessly between different L2s and the L1. Continued progress on achieving faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement times directly supports this objective, as quicker finality on the base layer and efficient settlement for rollups are essential for a truly fluid cross-chain experience. This focus is vital for fostering a unified Ethereum ecosystem, where users are not compartmentalized by their choice of L2, but rather experience a cohesive and interconnected network.
The "Harden the L1" Track: Fortifying Ethereum’s Core Principles
A brand new and critically important addition for 2026 is the "Harden the L1" track, led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery. This track reflects a dedicated focus on ensuring that as Ethereum continues its rapid scaling and evolution, it rigorously maintains and strengthens the fundamental properties that define its value proposition: security, decentralization, censorship resistance, and overall protocol robustness. This proactive approach acknowledges that growth must not come at the expense of core principles.
This track encompasses several vital areas:
- Core Protocol Security: This involves continuous auditing, formal verification, and stress-testing of the Ethereum protocol to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities. As the network processes trillions of dollars in value, maintaining an ironclad security posture is paramount.
- Decentralization: Efforts here focus on fostering client diversity (ensuring multiple independent software implementations of the Ethereum protocol), reducing hardware requirements for node operators, and monitoring network metrics to prevent undue centralization of power in any single entity or client. This includes exploring novel mechanisms to distribute validation responsibilities more broadly.
- Censorship Resistance: This involves developing and implementing features that make it harder for malicious actors or state-level entities to censor transactions or block access to the network. This includes research into privacy-enhancing technologies and mechanisms that resist malicious MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) extraction which could lead to transaction reordering or censorship.
- Protocol Robustness and Resilience: This area focuses on making the network more resilient to various types of attacks, network partitions, and unexpected failures. This could involve improvements to peer-to-peer networking, fault tolerance mechanisms, and disaster recovery protocols, ensuring that Ethereum remains operational and reliable under extreme conditions.
- Economic Security: Analyzing and optimizing the economic incentives within the protocol to ensure long-term stability and security of staking and transaction processing. This includes careful consideration of fee markets, validator rewards, and the overall economic model that underpins network security.
By dedicating a specific track to "Harden the L1," Ethereum signals its unwavering commitment to its foundational values, recognizing that sustained growth is only meaningful if the underlying infrastructure remains secure, decentralized, and censorship-resistant.
Looking Ahead: The Ambitious Path Through Glamsterdam and Hegotá
The ambitious roadmap for 2026 promises continued innovation and significant network enhancements. Glamsterdam is slated as the next major network upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is anticipated to introduce groundbreaking features such as parallel execution, which would allow multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously, dramatically increasing transaction throughput and efficiency. It will also likely include significantly higher gas limits beyond the current 60 million, further expanding L1 capacity. A key component of Glamsterdam is expected to be enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), a critical step towards mitigating Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) centralization risks and enhancing network decentralization. Enshrined PBS aims to separate the roles of transaction ordering (building blocks) and block proposing, fostering a more fair and robust block production process. Continued blob scaling efforts will also be integrated into Glamsterdam, building on the success of Fusaka.
Following Glamsterdam, Hegotá is planned for later in 2026. This subsequent upgrade will continue the relentless pursuit of scalability, user experience, and security improvements. Hegotá is expected to further advance blob scaling, pushing theoretical data availability limits even higher. It will also incorporate continued progress on censorship resistance mechanisms, native account abstraction implementations, and the integration of advanced post-quantum security measures, ensuring Ethereum remains at the forefront of cryptographic resilience.
The clear ambition for 2026 is to deliver a more scalable, user-friendly, and secure Ethereum. The restructured "Protocol" tracks are designed to streamline development, foster synergy between interdependent initiatives, and accelerate the realization of Ethereum’s long-term vision. The community can expect continued transparent, track-level updates, mirroring the communication strategy from the previous year. For those interested in deeper engagement or simply following along, protocol.ethereum.foundation remains the authoritative starting point. The message from the core developers is clear and resolute: the commitment to continuous innovation and delivery remains paramount.
