We introduced Protocol last June which organized our work around three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs and Improvement UX. A lot has happened since then! In this article, we want to share what we accomplished last year, how our thinking has evolved, and where the Protocol is heading in 2026.
TL;DR
- Great progress with tracks last year as we scaled L1, scaled blobs for L2, and built a solid foundation for UX improvements.
- Announcement of three new songs:
- Scale (led by Ansgar, Marius, Raúl) focused on blob consensus, execution, and scaling.
- Improve the UX (led by Barnabé and Matt) by doubling last year’s work.
- Strengthen L1 (led by Fredrik, Pari and Thomas) by ensuring that the fundamental properties of Ethereum are preserved through it all.
A little look back at 2025
2025 was one of Ethereum’s most productive years at the protocol level. We completed two major network upgrades and made significant progress on all the fronts we set out to address.
Pectra landed on mainnet in May, providing EIP-7702 which allows EOAs to temporarily execute smart contract code, unlocking transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and social recovery. Pectra also doubled the blob throughput, increased the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, and significantly reduced validator onboarding times.
Fusaka followed in December, bringing PeerDAS to mainnet. Validators now sample blob data rather than downloading it in its entirety, significantly reducing bandwidth requirements and increasing theoretical blob capacity by 8x. Two BPO (Blob Parameter Only) forks shipped alongside Fusaka, beginning the ramp of 6 blobs per block to higher targets.
Between the two upgrades, the community gradually increased the mainnet gas limit from 30 million initially to 60 million today, the first significant increase since 2021. Expiring history deleted pre-merge data from full nodes, saving hundreds of gigabytes of disk space. And on the UX side, the Open Intents Framework has reached production, implementations of L1 fast confirmation rules have progressed among consensus customers, and interoperability standards such as ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable Addresses and Names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster have progressed.
It was a strong year. But as we looked at the path ahead, it became clear that our track structure needed to evolve to meet the needs of the Ethereum community.
A significant year 2026
When we launched Protocol, we organized around three initiatives that closely aligned with short-term deliverables: increasing the gas limit, shipping PeerDAS, and improving the UX. This framing served us well in Pectra and Fusaka. Now that these steps are behind us, we have the opportunity to think about how we will organize our work at a slightly higher level.
From 2026, the work of the Protocol will be organized in three tracks:
Ladder
Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden and Raúl Kripalani
The Scale track brings together what was previously split between Scale L1 and Scale Blobs into one unified effort. This reflects a practical reality: the work to increase L1 execution capacity and expand data availability throughput are deeply intertwined. Gas limit increases depend on runtime performance. Blob scaling depends on networking and consensus changes that affect the same client code. Coordinating these efforts under one roof makes us faster and reduces the surface area for a more holistic view.
Concretely, this track revolves around:
- Continue to increase the gas limit up to and beyond 100 million, supported by block-level access lists (EIP-7928) and ongoing customer benchmarking
- Deliver Glamsterdam scaling components, including ePBS (EIP-7732), repricing, and new blob parameter increases
- Advancing the zkEVM attestation client from prototype to production readiness
- State scaling involving repricing and expiration of history in the short term, and a transition to binary trees and statelessness in the long term
Improve the UX
Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett
The Improve UX track carries over much of last year’s initiative, with an increased focus on two areas that we believe are the biggest lever for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction And interoperability.
When it comes to account abstraction, EIP-7702 was an important step, but the end state is smart contract wallets by default, without bundles, relays, or additional gas fees. Proposals like EIP-7701 and the more recent EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) push to integrate smart account logic directly into the protocol. This work also intersects with post-quantum readiness, since native AA provides a natural migration path away from ECDSA-based authentication. Added to this are a number of proposals in progress that could make the verification of quantum-resistant signatures in the EVM much more gas-efficient.
In terms of interoperability, we rely on the foundations laid by the Open Intents Framework. The goal remains transparent, trust-minimizing inter-L2 interactions and we are getting closer every day. Continued advancements in faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement times directly support this trend.
Harden the L1
Directed by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi and Thomas Thiery
Harden the L1 is a new avenue, and it reflects something that we think deserves special attention: ensuring that as Ethereum evolves and evolves, it retains the properties that make it valuable in the first place.
This covers several areas:
- Security: Fredrik continues to lead the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative and drive security hardening, including post-quantum readiness and execution layer protections such as post-execution transaction assertions and trustless RPC.
- Resistance to censorship: Thomas leads research on protocol resilience, covering FOCIL (EIP-7805) and its extensions: Censorship Resistance for Blobs, Statelessness (VOPS) and the development of measurable metrics of censorship resistance across the ecosystem.
- Resilience and network testing: Parithosh’s work on devnets, testnets, and client interoperability testing has been essential for every upgrade we have shipped. As we move toward an accelerated fork cadence, the infrastructure to safely validate and deploy changes becomes even more critical.
Looking to the future
Glamsterdam is the network’s next major upgrade, scheduled for the first half of 2026, with Hegotá expected to follow later in the year. The ambition is clear with parallel execution, significantly higher gas limits, dedicated PBS, continued blob scaling, and advancements in censorship resistance, native account abstraction, and post-quantum security.
We will continue to release track-level updates as we did last year; expect more information soon. If you want to follow or get involved, protocol.ethereum.foundation is the best place to start.
Let’s continue the expeditions.
