Ethereum’s core development team has unveiled a comprehensive strategic plan for the upcoming year, building on a period of significant protocol advancements throughout 2025. The "Protocol" initiative, initially introduced last June, has served as a guiding framework, organizing efforts around three key pillars: scaling Layer 1 (L1), expanding blob capacity, and enhancing user experience (UX). The past year has been exceptionally productive, marked by two major network upgrades and substantial progress across all strategic fronts. This report details the accomplishments of 2025, outlines evolving strategic thinking, and presents the forward-looking agenda for Protocol in 2026.
A Transformative 2025: Milestone Upgrades and Foundational Progress
The year 2025 stands out as one of Ethereum’s most impactful periods at the protocol level. The network successfully deployed two significant upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka, alongside incremental improvements that collectively bolstered its capabilities and accessibility.
The Pectra upgrade, launched in May 2025, introduced a suite of critical improvements. Foremost among these was EIP-7702, a groundbreaking Ethereum Improvement Proposal that grants Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) the ability to temporarily execute smart contract code. This innovation unlocks a range of powerful functionalities, including advanced transaction batching, gas sponsorship models, and robust social recovery mechanisms for account management. Beyond UX enhancements, Pectra significantly boosted the network’s data availability capabilities by doubling blob throughput. It also raised the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, a move designed to optimize staking economics and network security. Furthermore, Pectra dramatically reduced validator onboarding times, streamlining the process for new participants to secure the network.
Following Pectra, the Fusaka upgrade arrived in December 2025, introducing PeerDAS (Data Availability Sampling) to the mainnet. This pivotal change allows validators to sample blob data rather than downloading it in its entirety. The implications are profound: a substantial reduction in bandwidth requirements for validators, paving the way for a theoretical eight-fold increase in blob capacity. Fusaka was also accompanied by two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks, initiating a phased ramp-up from the initial six blobs per block towards significantly higher targets, a crucial step in scaling Ethereum’s data layer.
These major upgrades were complemented by a series of other vital developments. Between Pectra and Fusaka, the Ethereum community collectively raised the mainnet gas limit from an initial 30 million to 60 million gas per block. This represents the first substantial increase in gas capacity since 2021, directly enhancing the network’s ability to process more transactions concurrently. The implementation of "History Expiry" further optimized node operations by removing pre-Merge historical data from full nodes, leading to significant savings of hundreds of gigabytes of disk space.
On the user experience front, the Open Intents Framework reached a production-ready state, marking a significant step towards more intuitive and flexible transaction initiation. Progress was also made on L1 fast confirmation rule implementations across various consensus clients, aiming to reduce transaction finality times. Crucially, interoperability standards continued to advance, with the development of ERC-7930 and ERC-7828 for interoperable addresses and names, and ERC-7888, the Crosschain Broadcaster protocol, moving closer to widespread adoption.
This series of achievements underscores a year of focused execution and substantial technical progress, laying a robust foundation for future development. However, as the development team reviewed the roadmap ahead, it became evident that the existing organizational structure of Protocol needed to evolve to better address the burgeoning needs of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Realigned for Impact: Ethereum Protocol’s Strategic Tracks for 2026
In response to the successes of 2025 and the evolving landscape of blockchain technology, Ethereum’s Protocol initiative is adopting a refined organizational structure for 2026. The previous framework, centered on near-term deliverables like gas limit increases and blob scaling, served its purpose effectively through the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades. With these milestones met, the focus is shifting to a more strategic, high-level organization of work. Starting in 2026, Protocol’s efforts will be channeled into three distinct tracks, designed for maximum impact and long-term sustainability.
Scale: Unifying Execution and Data Availability
The "Scale" track, under the leadership of Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani, represents a significant consolidation of previous efforts. It merges the formerly distinct "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives into a single, unified endeavor. This integration reflects a pragmatic recognition of the deep interdependencies between increasing L1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput.
The rationale behind this unification is clear: advancements in gas limit increases are directly tied to the performance and efficiency of the execution engine. Similarly, scaling blob capacity relies on network and consensus modifications that inevitably impact the same client codebases responsible for execution. By coordinating these efforts under a single track, the development team aims to accelerate progress and foster a more holistic approach to scaling.
The Scale track’s concrete objectives include:
- Maximizing L1 Execution Capacity: This involves pushing the boundaries of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and optimizing transaction processing efficiency. The aim is to support a significantly higher volume of transactions on the base layer, making Ethereum more capable of handling mainstream adoption.
- Expanding Blob Throughput and Capacity: Building on the foundation laid by PeerDAS and the BPO forks, this objective focuses on further increasing the volume of data that can be stored on the Ethereum blockchain. This is critical for the scalability of Layer 2 solutions and the broader data availability layer.
- Enhancing Network Performance and Efficiency: This encompasses optimizing networking protocols, consensus mechanisms, and client software to ensure a robust and performant network capable of supporting increased load.
This unified approach is expected to yield more synergistic developments, where improvements in one area directly benefit and accelerate progress in another, leading to faster and more comprehensive scaling solutions for Ethereum.
Improve UX: Redefining Account Abstraction and Interoperability
The "Improve UX" track, spearheaded by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, carries forward the momentum from the previous year but with a sharpened focus on two high-leverage areas crucial for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and enhanced interoperability.
While EIP-7702 represented a significant step forward in enabling temporary smart contract code execution for EOAs, the ultimate goal is to establish smart contract wallets as the default account type. This vision aims to eliminate the reliance on bundlers, relayers, and additional gas overhead for users. 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. This foundational work is also intrinsically linked to Ethereum’s post-quantum readiness, as native account abstraction provides a natural and secure migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication methods. Complementary research is underway to develop gas-efficient methods for verifying quantum-resistant signatures within the EVM, ensuring the long-term security of the network.
On the interoperability front, the team is building upon the established foundation of the Open Intents Framework. The overarching objective remains to facilitate seamless, trust-minimized interactions between different Layer 2 solutions. Continued progress in reducing L1 confirmation times and accelerating L2 settlement periods directly supports this goal, creating a more cohesive and efficient multi-chain ecosystem.
Key objectives for the Improve UX track include:
- Native Account Abstraction: Driving the development and implementation of protocol-level features that make smart contract wallets the default, user-friendly account type.
- Seamless Interoperability: Enhancing the ability for users and applications to interact across different L2 solutions with minimal friction and enhanced security.
- Post-Quantum Security Integration: Ensuring Ethereum’s resilience against future quantum computing threats through advancements in cryptographic primitives and native account abstraction.
Harden the L1: Safeguarding Ethereum’s Core Value Proposition
A significant addition to the strategic framework is the "Harden the L1" track, led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery. This new track underscores a dedicated focus on ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it steadfastly retains the core properties that underpin its value and security.
This track encompasses several critical areas designed to fortify the L1 blockchain against potential threats and ensure its long-term integrity:
- Censorship Resistance: Implementing mechanisms and protocols to prevent the network from being coerced into censoring valid transactions. This is a fundamental tenet of a decentralized and permissionless blockchain.
- Validator Economics and Security: Continuously refining the economic incentives and security parameters for validators to ensure the network’s robustness and decentralization. This includes exploring advanced staking mechanisms and slashing conditions.
- Client Diversity and Resilience: Promoting and supporting a diverse range of independent Ethereum client implementations to prevent single points of failure and enhance overall network stability.
- Protocol Security Audits and Formal Verification: Intensifying efforts in security auditing, formal verification, and bug bounty programs to proactively identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities within the protocol.
- Decentralization Metrics and Monitoring: Developing and implementing robust metrics and monitoring tools to track and ensure the ongoing decentralization of Ethereum’s core infrastructure.
The establishment of the "Harden the L1" track signifies a proactive commitment to preserving Ethereum’s core decentralization and censorship-resistance principles amidst rapid scaling and technological advancement.
Looking Ahead: The Ambitious Roadmap for 2026
The immediate future for Ethereum protocol development is marked by the upcoming "Glamsterdam" network upgrade, tentatively scheduled for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is poised to introduce ambitious features such as parallel execution, substantially higher gas limits, enshrined proposer-builder separation (PBS), and continued advancements in blob scaling. Alongside these, significant progress is anticipated in areas such as censorship resistance, native account abstraction, and the integration of post-quantum security measures.
Following Glamsterdam, the "Hegotá" upgrade is planned for later in 2026, further building upon the foundation laid by its predecessor. The overarching ambition for 2026 is to deliver a more performant, secure, and user-friendly Ethereum that can accommodate a new era of decentralized applications and mainstream adoption.
The Ethereum development community will continue its practice of publishing regular, track-level updates, providing transparency and detailed insights into ongoing progress, mirroring the approach taken in the preceding year. For those interested in following the development journey or contributing to the ecosystem, the central resource remains protocol.ethereum.foundation. The message from the core development team is clear and resonant: "Let’s keep shipping." This commitment to continuous delivery and iterative improvement is the driving force behind Ethereum’s ongoing evolution and its position at the forefront of blockchain innovation.
