We introduced Protocol final June which organized our work round three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Enhance UX. Loads has occurred since then! On this publish, we need to share what we completed final yr, how our considering has advanced, and the place Protocol is headed in 2026.
TL;DR
- Nice progress with tracks final yr as we scaled L1, scaled blobs for L2, and constructed a robust basis for UX enhancements.
- Asserting three new tracks:
- Scale (led by Ansgar, Marius, Raúl) targeted on consensus, execution, and blob scaling.
- Enhance UX (led by Barnabé and Matt) doubling down on the work from final yr.
- Harden the L1 (led by Fredrik, Pari and Thomas) making certain the core properties of Ethereum are preserved via all of it.
A fast look again at 2025
2025 was one among Ethereum’s best years on the protocol degree. We shipped two main community upgrades and made significant progress on each entrance we got down to deal with.
Pectra landed on mainnet in Could, delivering EIP-7702 that lets EOAs briefly execute good contract code, unlocking transaction batching, fuel sponsorship, and social restoration. Pectra additionally doubled blob throughput, raised the max effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, and dramatically shortened validator onboarding times.
Fusaka adopted in December, bringing PeerDAS to mainnet. Validators now pattern blob knowledge reasonably than downloading it in full, considerably lowering bandwidth necessities and enabling an 8x enhance in theoretical blob capability. Two BPO (Blob Parameter Solely) forks shipped alongside Fusaka, starting the ramp from 6 blobs per block towards increased targets.
Between the 2 upgrades, the neighborhood steadily raised the mainnet fuel restrict from an preliminary 30M to at the moment’s 60M which is the primary important enhance since 2021. History expiry eliminated pre-Merge knowledge from full nodes, saving a whole bunch of gigabytes of disk house. And on the UX facet, the Open Intents Framework reached manufacturing, the L1 fast confirmation rule implementations progressed throughout consensus purchasers, and interoperability requirements corresponding to ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved ahead.
It was a robust yr. However as we seemed on the street forward, it grew to become clear that our monitor construction wanted to evolve to match the wants of the Ethereum neighborhood.
An impactful 2026
After we launched Protocol, we organized round three initiatives that mapped intently to near-term deliverables: get the fuel restrict up, get PeerDAS shipped, and enhance UX. That framing served us nicely via Pectra and Fusaka. Now that these milestones are behind us, we’ve the chance to consider how we manage our work at a barely increased degree.
Beginning in 2026, Protocol’s work is organized into three tracks:
Scale
Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani
The Scale monitor brings collectively what was beforehand break up throughout Scale L1 and Scale Blobs right into a single, unified effort. This displays a sensible actuality: the work of accelerating L1 execution capability and increasing knowledge availability throughput is deeply intertwined. Gasoline restrict will increase rely on execution engine efficiency. Blob scaling relies on networking and consensus modifications that contact the identical consumer code. Coordinating these efforts below one roof makes us sooner and reduces the floor space for a extra holistic view.
Concretely, this monitor is targeted on:
- Persevering with to lift the fuel restrict towards and past 100M, supported by Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928) and ongoing consumer benchmarking
- Delivering the scaling parts of Glamsterdam, together with ePBS (EIP-7732), repricings, and additional blob parameter will increase
- Advancing the zkEVM attester consumer from prototype towards manufacturing readiness
- State scaling involving repricing and historical past expiry within the quick time period, and a transfer to binary bushes and statelessness in the long run
Enhance UX
Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett
The Enhance UX monitor carries ahead a lot of the initiative from final yr, with a sharper concentrate on two areas that we consider are highest-leverage for Ethereum’s usability in 2026: native account abstraction and interoperability.
On account abstraction, EIP-7702 was an necessary step, however the finish state is wise contract wallets because the default with out bundlers, relayers, or further fuel overhead. Proposals like EIP-7701 and the newer EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are pushing towards embedding good account logic instantly into the protocol. This work additionally intersects with post-quantum readiness, since native AA offers a pure migration path away from ECDSA-based authentication. Complementary to this are quite a few proposals within the works that would make it far more gas-efficient to confirm quantum-resistant signatures within the EVM.
On interoperability, we’re constructing on the muse laid by the Open Intents Framework. The objective stays seamless, trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions and we’re getting nearer daily. Continued progress on sooner L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement occasions instantly helps this.
Harden the L1
Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery
Harden the L1 is a brand new monitor, and it displays one thing we expect deserves devoted focus: ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it retains the properties that make it priceless within the first place.
This covers a number of areas:
- Safety: Fredrik continues to guide the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative and is driving safety hardening together with post-quantum readiness, and execution-layer safeguards like post-execution transaction assertions and trustless RPCs.
- Censorship resistance: Thomas leads the monitor’s protocol resilience analysis, spanning FOCIL (EIP-7805) and its extensions: censorship resistance for blobs, statelessness (VOPS), and the event of measurable censorship resistance metrics throughout the ecosystem.
- Community resilience and testing: Parithosh’s work on devnets, testnets, and consumer interop testing has been important to each improve we have shipped. As we transfer towards an accelerated fork cadence, the infrastructure for safely validating and deploying modifications turns into much more vital.
Wanting forward
Glamsterdam is the subsequent main community improve, focused for the primary half of 2026, with Hegotá deliberate to comply with later within the yr. The ambition is obvious with parallel execution, considerably increased fuel limits, enshrined PBS, continued blob scaling, and progress on censorship resistance, native account abstraction, and post-quantum safety.
We’ll proceed publishing track-level updates as we did final yr; count on extra info quickly. If you wish to comply with alongside or become involved, protocol.ethereum.foundation is the perfect start line.
Let’s preserve delivery.
