Ethereum’s Strategic Evolution: A Landmark Year and a Bold Vision for 2026

London, UK – [Date of publication] – Ethereum, the world’s leading smart contract platform, has unveiled an ambitious roadmap for 2026, building on a highly productive 2025. The core development team, operating under the "Protocol" initiative launched last June, announced a significant restructuring of its strategic focus, aiming to further enhance scalability, user experience, and the fundamental robustness of the Layer 1 blockchain. This evolution reflects the dynamic needs of its burgeoning ecosystem, promising a more efficient, accessible, and secure platform for its global user base.

The announcement comes after a year marked by two major network upgrades – Pectra and Fusaka – alongside a substantial increase in network capacity and crucial advancements in user-centric features. As Ethereum marches towards its vision of becoming a truly global settlement layer, the shift in organizational structure is designed to foster greater synergy and accelerate progress on its most critical challenges.

A Retrospective on 2025: Unprecedented Progress in Core Development

2025 proved to be one of Ethereum’s most impactful years at the protocol level, demonstrating the community’s relentless drive for innovation and improvement. The year saw the successful deployment of two major network upgrades, alongside a host of complementary enhancements that laid crucial groundwork for future developments.

The Pectra Upgrade: Enhancing User Experience and Staking Dynamics

Landed on mainnet in May 2025, the Pectra upgrade represented a significant leap forward in addressing both user experience and the mechanics of network participation. This upgrade introduced several key Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that brought immediate and tangible benefits:

• EIP-7702: Temporary Smart Contract Code Execution for EOAs: This EIP was a groundbreaking step towards native account abstraction. It allowed Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) – the standard user accounts controlled by private keys – to temporarily execute smart contract code within a transaction. This innovation unlocked a new realm of possibilities for developers and users, including transaction batching (grouping multiple actions into one transaction), gas sponsorship (allowing third parties to cover transaction fees), and social recovery mechanisms (enabling users to regain access to their accounts through trusted contacts). The implications for decentralised applications (dApps) are profound, paving the way for more flexible, secure, and user-friendly wallet experiences that abstract away much of the current complexity of interacting with the blockchain. For many, this was seen as a crucial precursor to a future where smart contract wallets become the default.

• EIP-7691: Doubled Blob Throughput: Recognizing the escalating demand for data availability, particularly from Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions, Pectra doubled the network’s blob throughput. Blobs are temporary data segments introduced with the Dencun upgrade, designed to provide cheap data space for rollups. By increasing their capacity, Ethereum significantly enhanced its ability to support the scaling efforts of L2s, directly contributing to lower transaction costs and higher transaction volumes across the ecosystem. This was a direct response to the increasing adoption of rollups as Ethereum’s primary scaling strategy.

• EIP-7251: Raised Max Effective Validator Balance to 2,048 ETH: This EIP addressed concerns regarding staking efficiency and validator economics. Previously capped at 32 ETH, the maximum effective balance for a validator was dramatically increased. This change allowed existing validators to consolidate their stake, reducing the operational overhead associated with managing multiple 32 ETH validators. For institutional stakers and large individual contributors, this meant a more streamlined process and potentially better returns, while also reducing the overall validator count without compromising decentralization, as the number of active validators remained robust.

• EIP-6110: Shortened Validator Onboarding Times: A critical improvement for network health and decentralization, EIP-6110 dramatically shortened the time required for new validators to become active. Faster onboarding reduces the queue of pending validators, ensuring that the network can quickly adapt to demand for staking, making the staking process more responsive and accessible to new participants. This directly impacts the network’s security and censorship resistance by enabling a more fluid and dynamic set of validators.

The Fusaka Upgrade: Pioneering Data Availability Sampling (DAS) with PeerDAS

Following Pectra, the Fusaka upgrade, launched in December 2025, marked another monumental achievement, bringing the long-anticipated PeerDAS (Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling) to mainnet.

• EIP-7594: PeerDAS Implementation: PeerDAS fundamentally changes how validators handle blob data. Instead of requiring every validator to download the entire blob data for each block, PeerDAS enables validators to sample only small portions of the data. This revolutionary technique significantly reduces the bandwidth requirements for validators, making it much easier and cheaper to run an Ethereum node. The most critical outcome of PeerDAS is its enablement of an 8x increase in theoretical blob capacity. This exponential increase in data availability is paramount for the continued scaling of L2 rollups, allowing them to post significantly more transaction data to the mainnet at lower costs, thus making L2 transactions even cheaper and faster for end-users.

• Blob Parameter Only (BPO) Forks: Shipped alongside Fusaka, these BPO forks initiated the gradual ramp-up of blob capacity, starting from 6 blobs per block and moving towards higher targets. This incremental approach ensures network stability while progressively unlocking more data availability for rollups, showcasing a cautious yet determined strategy to scaling.

Broader Ecosystem Enhancements: Gas Limits, History Expiry, and Interoperability

Beyond the major upgrades, 2025 saw several other pivotal developments:

• Mainnet Gas Limit Increase: In a significant move, the Ethereum community steadily raised the mainnet gas limit from an initial 30 million to an impressive 60 million. This marked the first substantial increase since 2021 and directly translated into a doubling of the maximum computational work that can be included in a single Ethereum block. The increase improved transaction throughput on Layer 1, offering more capacity for users and dApps and potentially leading to more stable and predictable gas fees, especially during periods of high demand. This was a testament to the ongoing optimization of Ethereum’s execution layer clients, allowing them to handle the increased load.

• History Expiry: To combat the ever-growing storage demands on full nodes, History Expiry was implemented, removing pre-Merge historical data. This critical optimization saved hundreds of gigabytes of disk space for node operators, making it more feasible and less costly to run a full Ethereum node. By reducing the barrier to entry for node operation, history expiry indirectly contributes to the decentralization and health of the network.

• User Experience and Interoperability Milestones: The year also saw significant progress on the user experience (UX) front. The Open Intents Framework reached production, providing a standardized way for users to express their desired outcomes (intents) which can then be fulfilled by various protocols, enhancing flexibility and composability. Implementations for L1 fast confirmation rules progressed across consensus clients, aiming to reduce the time it takes for transactions to be considered final, which is crucial for faster cross-chain interactions. Furthermore, critical interoperability standards such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved forward. These standards are essential for creating a seamless, multi-chain experience, allowing assets and information to flow more freely and securely between different L2s and other blockchain networks.

The Rationale for Reorganization: Adapting to Evolving Needs

While 2025 was undoubtedly a strong year, the core development team recognized that the "Protocol" initiative’s initial structure, organized around "Scale L1," "Scale Blobs," and "Improve UX," needed to evolve. This initial framing was highly effective for achieving immediate, tangible deliverables like increasing the gas limit and shipping PeerDAS. However, as these milestones were met, the interconnectedness of various development efforts became increasingly apparent. The community’s needs were evolving, requiring a more holistic and strategic approach to long-term development. This realization prompted the strategic restructuring for 2026, aimed at fostering deeper collaboration and a more integrated approach to Ethereum’s future.

Ethereum’s Strategic Re-Alignment for 2026: Three Pillars of Growth

Beginning in 2026, the "Protocol" initiative’s work is streamlined into three distinct, yet interconnected, tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1. This refined structure aims to optimize resource allocation, enhance coordination, and provide a clearer focus for the diverse development efforts.

Track 1: Scale – Unifying L1 Execution and Data Availability

Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani

The newly unified "Scale" track consolidates what was previously separated into "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs." This consolidation is a pragmatic recognition of the deep interdependence between increasing the Layer 1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput. For instance, further gas limit increases are intrinsically linked to the performance and optimization of execution engines, while blob scaling relies heavily on networking and consensus changes that often touch the same client codebase.

By bringing these efforts under a single leadership, the team anticipates faster progress and a more holistic perspective on scaling challenges. This integrated approach reduces potential friction points and encourages a comprehensive strategy for managing the network’s overall capacity.

Concretely, this track is focused on:

• Continued Gas Limit Increases: Pushing the boundaries of L1 transaction capacity beyond the current 60 million gas, contingent on ongoing execution client optimizations and network stability. This involves meticulous benchmarking and testing to ensure that increased limits do not compromise network health or decentralization.
• Aggressive Blob Scaling: Expanding blob capacity beyond the initial targets set by PeerDAS, exploring mechanisms to support even higher data throughput for rollups. This will involve further optimizations to the data availability sampling mechanism and potentially new cryptographic primitives.
• Execution Client Optimization: Continuous improvement of Ethereum’s execution clients (e.g., Geth, Erigon, Nethermind) to handle increased transaction loads and gas limits more efficiently. This includes optimizing EVM performance, state access, and transaction processing.
• Network Layer Enhancements: Improving the peer-to-peer networking layer to ensure efficient propagation of blocks and blob data, which is critical as network load increases.
• Research into Future Scaling Paradigms: While focused on immediate scaling, the track will also engage with research into longer-term scaling solutions, ensuring Ethereum’s adaptability to future demands.

The success of the Scale track is paramount for the entire Ethereum ecosystem, as it directly translates into lower fees and faster transactions for end-users interacting with L2s, cementing Ethereum’s position as the secure settlement layer for a multitude of applications.

Track 2: Improve UX – Native Account Abstraction and Seamless Interoperability

Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett

The "Improve UX" track continues its mission from the previous year but with a sharpened focus on two areas deemed highest-leverage for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability.

On the front of native account abstraction (AA), EIP-7702 in Pectra was a crucial first step, but the ultimate goal remains the widespread adoption of smart contract wallets as the default user experience, entirely devoid of the complexities introduced by bundlers, relayers, or additional gas overhead. This track will actively push forward proposals like:

• EIP-7701: This proposal, among others, seeks to embed smart account logic directly into the protocol, moving away from the current EOA-centric model. The aim is to make programmable accounts a native feature of Ethereum, simplifying user onboarding and enabling advanced features like multi-signature security, spending limits, and automated payments directly at the protocol level.
• EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions): A more recent proposal, Frame Transactions aims to further streamline the process of executing complex, multi-step transactions often associated with smart contract wallets. By allowing for more expressive and efficient transaction formats, EIP-8141 contributes to a smoother and more gas-efficient user experience for AA.

Beyond immediate UX improvements, native AA also plays a crucial role in post-quantum readiness. By enabling programmable accounts, it provides a natural and robust migration path away from ECDSA-based authentication (the current standard, vulnerable to quantum attacks) towards quantum-resistant signature schemes. Complementary to this, the track will focus on proposals to make the verification of these quantum-resistant signatures much more gas-efficient within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), ensuring future security without prohibitive costs.

Regarding interoperability, the track is building upon the foundational work laid by the Open Intents Framework. The overarching goal is to achieve seamless, trust-minimized cross-Layer 2 (L2) interactions. This means users should be able to move assets, interact with dApps, and conduct transactions across different L2s with the same ease and security as if they were on a single chain. Continued progress on achieving faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement times directly supports this objective, as quicker finality on the base layer accelerates the security and efficiency of cross-rollup communication. This track is vital for fostering a cohesive and expansive multi-chain ecosystem, where the user experience is not fragmented by underlying technological distinctions.

Track 3: Harden the L1 – Fortifying Ethereum’s Foundational Properties

Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery

"Harden the L1" is a new and critical track, explicitly designed to dedicate focused attention to ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it rigorously maintains and strengthens the fundamental properties that define its value proposition: decentralization, security, and censorship resistance. This track acknowledges that rapid innovation must be balanced with robust foundational integrity.

This new track covers several crucial areas:

• Censorship Resistance: This involves ongoing research and implementation of mechanisms to mitigate potential censorship vectors, particularly in the context of proposer-builder separation (PBS) and Maximum Extractable Value (MEV). Efforts will focus on ensuring that block proposers maintain autonomy and that the network remains resilient against attempts to exclude certain transactions or users. This includes exploring enshrined PBS, where the MEV-smoothing mechanism is integrated directly into the protocol.
• Decentralization: Safeguarding and enhancing the decentralization of the network remains a core tenet. This involves monitoring client diversity, encouraging participation from a wide array of node operators, and ensuring that protocol changes do not inadvertently centralize power or resources. Initiatives like continued efforts on history expiry and optimizing node resource requirements contribute to this goal.
• Security: This encompasses a broad range of activities, including formal verification of protocol components, rigorous auditing of client implementations, and fostering a strong security research community. The track will also focus on identifying and addressing potential attack vectors, both known and emerging, ensuring the network’s resilience against malicious actors. This includes robust testing environments and bug bounty programs.
• Stability: Maintaining the stability and reliability of the Ethereum mainnet is paramount. This involves robust testing methodologies, clear upgrade processes, and proactive monitoring of network health. The track will work to minimize the risk of disruptions and ensure that the network operates predictably and consistently for all users.
• Protocol Resilience: Investigating and implementing features that make the protocol more robust against various external pressures, including economic attacks, network partitions, and potential future threats. This includes studying game theory implications of protocol changes and designing for adversarial environments.

The "Harden the L1" track underscores Ethereum’s commitment to its core ethos, ensuring that its journey towards global scalability does not compromise the trustless and permissionless nature that makes it so revolutionary.

Looking Ahead: The Ambitious Roadmap for Glamsterdam and Hegotá

The year 2026 is poised to be another period of transformative development for Ethereum, with two major network upgrades already slated: Glamsterdam in the first half of the year, followed by Hegotá later in the year.

The Vision for 2026 Network Upgrades

• Glamsterdam (H1 2026): This upgrade is anticipated to introduce groundbreaking features that will significantly elevate Ethereum’s performance and architectural integrity. Key components include:

  • Parallel Execution: A highly anticipated feature that would allow multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously rather than sequentially. This could dramatically increase the network’s transaction throughput on Layer 1, offering a monumental leap in performance. Implementing parallel execution is a complex undertaking, requiring fundamental changes to the EVM and execution clients, but its potential impact on scalability is immense.
  • Significantly Higher Gas Limits: Building on the work of the "Scale" track, Glamsterdam aims to push the gas limit even further, capitalizing on the performance gains from client optimizations and potentially parallel execution.
  • Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS): This is a critical step towards mitigating the centralization risks associated with MEV and improving censorship resistance. Enshrined PBS aims to integrate the separation of block building (packaging transactions) from block proposing (ordering transactions) directly into the protocol, rather than relying on external, off-chain solutions. This would ensure that the benefits of MEV are more evenly distributed and that the network remains resistant to censorship.
  • Continued Blob Scaling: Further enhancements to blob capacity and efficiency, supporting the exponential growth of L2 solutions.

• Hegotá (Later 2026): Following Glamsterdam, Hegotá will continue the trajectory of refinement and security. This upgrade is expected to bring:

  • Further progress on censorship resistance mechanisms.
  • Advancements in native account abstraction, bringing smart contract wallets closer to mainstream adoption.
  • Continued focus on post-quantum security measures, fortifying Ethereum against future cryptographic threats.

The ambition for 2026 is clear: to deliver a significantly more powerful, secure, and user-friendly Ethereum. These upgrades represent not just incremental improvements, but fundamental shifts in the network’s architecture and capabilities, setting the stage for an era of unprecedented scalability and accessibility.

Conclusion: A Community-Driven Path to a Global Settlement Layer

Ethereum’s journey is one of continuous evolution, driven by a dedicated global community of researchers, developers, and users. The restructuring of the "Protocol" initiative for 2026, building upon the impressive accomplishments of 2025, reflects a mature and responsive development process. By strategically consolidating scaling efforts, sharpening the focus on user experience and interoperability, and establishing a dedicated track for hardening the Layer 1, Ethereum is fortifying its foundations while aggressively pursuing its vision.

Regular track-level updates will continue to be published, providing transparency and opportunities for community involvement. For those eager to follow along or contribute, protocol.ethereum.foundation remains the primary hub for information and engagement. The path ahead is challenging, but the commitment to shipping a decentralized, scalable, and robust global settlement layer remains unwavering. The Ethereum community, once again, stands ready to keep building, keep innovating, and keep shipping.