We introduced Protocol final June which organized our work round three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Enhance UX. Quite a bit has occurred since then! On this put up, we wish to share what we achieved final 12 months, how our considering has advanced, and the place Protocol is headed in 2026.
TL;DR
- Nice progress with tracks final 12 months as we scaled L1, scaled blobs for L2, and constructed a powerful 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 12 months.
- Harden the L1 (led by Fredrik, Pari and Thomas) making certain the core properties of Ethereum are preserved by way of all of it.
A fast look again at 2025
2025 was one in all Ethereum’s best years on the protocol stage. 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 quickly 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 moderately 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 larger targets.
Between the 2 upgrades, the group steadily raised the mainnet fuel restrict from an preliminary 30M to at this time’s 60M which is the primary important enhance since 2021. History expiry eliminated pre-Merge knowledge from full nodes, saving a whole lot of gigabytes of disk area. And on the UX facet, the Open Intents Framework reached manufacturing, the L1 fast confirmation rule implementations progressed throughout consensus shoppers, and interoperability requirements equivalent to ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved ahead.
It was a powerful 12 months. However as we regarded on the highway forward, it grew to become clear that our monitor construction wanted to evolve to match the wants of the Ethereum group.
An impactful 2026
Once 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 effectively by way of Pectra and Fusaka. Now that these milestones are behind us, we’ve the chance to consider how we set up our work at a barely larger stage.
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 upon execution engine efficiency. Blob scaling is dependent upon networking and consensus adjustments that contact the identical consumer code. Coordinating these efforts underneath one roof makes us quicker and reduces the floor space for a extra holistic view.
Concretely, this monitor is concentrated 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 elements 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 timber 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 12 months, with a sharper deal with 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 vital step, however the finish state is wise contract wallets because the default with out bundlers, relayers, or additional fuel overhead. Proposals like EIP-7701 and the more moderen EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are pushing towards embedding good account logic immediately into the protocol. This work additionally intersects with post-quantum readiness, since native AA gives a pure migration path away from ECDSA-based authentication. Complementary to this are quite a lot of proposals within the works that might 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 day-to-day. Continued progress on quicker L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement instances immediately 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 precious within the first place.
This covers a number of areas:
- Safety: Fredrik continues to steer 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 adjustments turns into much more vital.
Wanting forward
Glamsterdam is the following main community improve, focused for the primary half of 2026, with Hegotá deliberate to observe later within the 12 months. The ambition is evident with parallel execution, considerably larger 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 12 months; count on extra data quickly. If you wish to observe alongside or become involved, protocol.ethereum.foundation is one of the best start line.
Let’s hold delivery.
