Last June, Ethereum introduced "Protocol," a strategic framework designed to organize its development efforts around three core initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX. A year of significant advancements has since transpired, prompting a re-evaluation and evolution of these objectives. This comprehensive overview details the accomplishments of the past year, the shifts in strategic thinking, and the ambitious roadmap for Protocol in 2026.
A Pivotal Year for Ethereum Protocol: 2025 in Retrospect
The year 2025 marked one of Ethereum’s most productive periods at the protocol level, characterized by the successful execution of two major network upgrades and substantial progress across all strategic fronts. These upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka, have not only delivered key functionalities but have also fundamentally reshaped the network’s scalability and user experience.
The Pectra upgrade, deployed to the mainnet in May 2025, introduced EIP-7702. This significant enhancement empowers Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs) to temporarily execute smart contract code, thereby unlocking a suite of advanced functionalities. Among the most impactful are transaction batching, enabling users to bundle multiple operations into a single transaction, and gas sponsorship, allowing third parties to cover transaction fees for users. Furthermore, EIP-7702 facilitates social recovery mechanisms, providing more robust account management and security options for users. Beyond account abstraction, Pectra doubled the network’s blob throughput, a critical component for data availability. It also raised the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, an adjustment aimed at optimizing staking economics and network security. Crucially, the upgrade dramatically shortened validator onboarding times, making it more accessible for new participants to join the consensus mechanism.
Following Pectra, the Fusaka upgrade arrived in December 2025, bringing the groundbreaking PeerDAS (DAS for Data Availability Sampling) to the mainnet. This innovation fundamentally alters how validators interact with blob data. Instead of downloading entire blobs, validators now sample them, a paradigm shift that significantly reduces bandwidth requirements. This efficiency gain is projected to enable an eight-fold increase in theoretical blob capacity, a vital step towards accommodating the burgeoning data needs of decentralized applications and scaling solutions. Accompanying Fusaka were two Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks, initiating a gradual ramp-up from the current six blobs per block towards higher targets, signaling a clear trajectory for enhanced data availability.
These two major upgrades were complemented by a series of other critical advancements throughout 2025. The community collectively agreed to increase the mainnet gas limit from an initial 30 million to 60 million, representing the first substantial rise since 2021. This increase directly boosts the network’s transaction processing capacity. History expiry, implemented via EIP-7620, played a crucial role in network efficiency by removing pre-Merge historical data from full nodes, resulting in savings of hundreds of gigabytes of disk space per node.
On the user experience front, the Open Intents Framework reached a production-ready stage, paving the way for more sophisticated and user-friendly decentralized application interactions. Progress was also made on L1 fast confirmation rule implementations across various consensus clients, a development aimed at reducing transaction finality times. Furthermore, interoperability standards continued to advance with the progression of ERC-7930 + ERC-7828, which standardize interoperable addresses and names, and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster, facilitating smoother cross-chain communication.
Evolving the Framework: Introducing New Strategic Tracks for 2026
While 2025 was a landmark year, the rapid evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem and the growing demands of its community necessitated a refinement of the Protocol’s organizational structure. The initial three initiatives—Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX—served as effective catalysts for the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades. However, with these milestones achieved, a more holistic and forward-looking approach is required. Starting in 2026, Protocol’s work will be reorganized into three distinct, yet interconnected, tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
Scale: Unifying Execution and Data Availability
The "Scale" track, spearheaded by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raül Kripalani, represents a significant consolidation of previous efforts. It merges the former "Scale L1" and "Scale Blobs" initiatives into a unified domain. This integration acknowledges the deeply intertwined nature of increasing Layer 1 execution capacity and expanding data availability throughput. Practical realities dictate that gas limit increases are intrinsically linked to the performance of the execution engine, while blob scaling relies on networking and consensus changes that invariably impact the same core client codebases. By coordinating these efforts under a single roof, the Ethereum development community aims to accelerate progress and foster a more comprehensive understanding of the scaling landscape.
The primary objectives of the Scale track are:
- Boosting Execution Throughput: This involves further increasing the L1 gas limit, potentially through optimizations in the execution layer and more efficient transaction processing. The goal is to accommodate a higher volume of smart contract interactions and decentralized applications without compromising network performance.
- Expanding Data Availability: Building upon the success of PeerDAS introduced in Fusaka, this objective focuses on further increasing blob capacity and optimizing data propagation mechanisms. This is crucial for the scalability of Layer 2 solutions, which rely heavily on Ethereum’s data availability layer.
- Enhancing Network Efficiency: This encompasses a broad range of improvements, including network protocol optimizations, more efficient block propagation, and reductions in resource consumption for nodes, thereby making the network more accessible and sustainable.
Improve UX: Towards Seamless and Secure User Experiences
The "Improve UX" track, led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, inherits the spirit of last year’s efforts but sharpens its focus on two particularly high-leverage areas for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability.
On the front of native account abstraction, EIP-7702 served as a crucial stepping stone. However, the ultimate vision is for smart contract wallets to become the default user experience, eliminating the need for external bundlers, relayers, or additional gas overhead. 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 fundamental shift promises to democratize access to advanced features and enhance security for all users.
Furthermore, this work on native account abstraction has significant implications for post-quantum readiness. By providing a natural migration path away from current ECDSA-based authentication methods, it allows for a smoother transition to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. Complementary to these efforts are several proposals in development that aim to make verifying quantum-resistant signatures within the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) significantly more gas-efficient. This proactive approach ensures Ethereum’s long-term security in an evolving cryptographic landscape.
In the realm of interoperability, the focus is on building upon the foundational work of the Open Intents Framework. The overarching goal remains to enable seamless, trust-minimized interactions across Layer 2 solutions. Continued progress on faster L1 confirmations and reduced L2 settlement times directly underpins this objective, paving the way for a more cohesive and integrated multi-chain ecosystem. The development of interoperability standards like ERC-7930 + ERC-7828 and ERC-7888 signifies a commitment to building a robust and user-friendly cross-chain future.
Harden the L1: Preserving Core Ethereum Values
A new and critically important track, "Harden the L1," led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery, is dedicated to ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it steadfastly retains the fundamental properties that underpin its value proposition. This track acknowledges that rapid growth and innovation must be balanced with a commitment to the core principles of decentralization, security, and censorship resistance.
The key areas of focus for Harden the L1 include:
- Security Enhancements: This involves continuous research and implementation of measures to protect the network against emerging threats, including sophisticated attacks and vulnerabilities. The goal is to fortify the L1 against unforeseen challenges.
- Decentralization Efforts: Maintaining and strengthening the decentralized nature of Ethereum is paramount. This track will explore mechanisms and protocols that promote broader participation in consensus, reduce reliance on centralized infrastructure, and prevent undue influence by any single entity.
- Censorship Resistance: A cornerstone of Ethereum’s value is its ability to operate without censorship. This track will focus on developing and implementing technical solutions that actively resist censorship attempts, ensuring that transactions and applications can operate freely.
- Economic Security: Ensuring the robust economic security of the network is vital. This involves analyzing and optimizing incentive mechanisms, staking economics, and the overall financial resilience of the protocol against various economic pressures.
- Client Diversity and Robustness: Promoting and supporting a diverse range of client implementations is crucial for network resilience. This track will encourage the development of new clients and enhance the robustness of existing ones, reducing the risk of single points of failure.
Looking Ahead: The Ambitious Roadmap for 2026
The next major network upgrade, "Glamsterdam," is tentatively scheduled for the first half of 2026. This upgrade is poised to introduce a host of transformative features, including parallel execution capabilities, significantly higher gas limits, enshrined proposer-builder separation (PBS), and continued advancements in blob scaling. Alongside these scaling innovations, Glamsterdam will also focus on critical user experience improvements such as progress on native account abstraction and enhanced censorship resistance.
Following Glamsterdam, "Hegotà" is planned for later in 2026, further building upon the advancements introduced in the first upgrade. The ambition for these upgrades is clear: to propel Ethereum towards a new era of scalability, security, and usability. The focus on post-quantum security will also be a significant theme, ensuring the network’s long-term resilience in the face of evolving cryptographic threats.
The Ethereum development community will continue its practice of publishing regular track-level updates, providing transparency and fostering community engagement. For those interested in following the progress or contributing to these efforts, the dedicated platform at protocol.ethereum.foundation serves as the primary resource.
The commitment to continuous development and innovation remains unwavering. As the Ethereum ecosystem matures, the strategic reorganization of Protocol’s efforts into Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1 signals a mature and forward-thinking approach, aimed at ensuring Ethereum’s continued growth, security, and accessibility for years to come. The message from the core development teams is clear: "Let’s keep shipping."
