We launched Protocol final June which organized our work round three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Enhance UX. Rather a lot has occurred since then! On this publish, we need to share what we achieved final yr, how our pondering 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 powerful basis for UX enhancements.
- Saying three new tracks:
- Scale (led by Ansgar, Marius, Raúl) centered 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 by way of all of it.
A fast look again at 2025
2025 was one in every of 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 sensible contract code, unlocking transaction batching, fuel sponsorship, and social restoration. Pectra additionally doubled blob throughput, raised the max efficient validator stability to 2,048 ETH, and dramatically shortened validator onboarding occasions.
Fusaka adopted in December, bringing PeerDAS to mainnet. Validators now pattern blob information slightly than downloading it in full, considerably lowering bandwidth necessities and enabling an 8x improve 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 group steadily raised the mainnet fuel restrict from an preliminary 30M to in the present day’s 60M which is the primary vital improve since 2021. Historical past expiry eliminated pre-Merge information from full nodes, saving tons of of gigabytes of disk area. And on the UX aspect, the Open Intents Framework reached manufacturing, the L1 quick affirmation rule implementations progressed throughout consensus purchasers, and interoperability requirements resembling ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved ahead.
It was a powerful yr. However as we regarded on the street forward, it turned clear that our observe construction wanted to evolve to match the wants of the Ethereum group.
An impactful 2026
After we launched Protocol, we organized round three initiatives that mapped carefully to near-term deliverables: get the fuel restrict up, get PeerDAS shipped, and enhance UX. That framing served us nicely by way of Pectra and Fusaka. Now that these milestones are behind us, we’ve got the chance to consider how we set up 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 observe 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 information availability throughput is deeply intertwined. Gasoline restrict will increase rely on execution engine efficiency. Blob scaling is dependent upon networking and consensus adjustments that contact the identical shopper code. Coordinating these efforts below one roof makes us quicker and reduces the floor space for a extra holistic view.
Concretely, this observe is concentrated on:
- Persevering with to lift the fuel restrict towards and past 100M, supported by Block-level Entry Lists (EIP-7928) and ongoing shopper benchmarking
- Delivering the scaling parts of Glamsterdam, together with ePBS (EIP-7732), repricings, and additional blob parameter will increase
- Advancing the zkEVM attester shopper 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 observe carries ahead a lot of the initiative from final yr, with a sharper deal with two areas that we imagine 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 sensible contract wallets because the default with out bundlers, relayers, or additional fuel overhead. Proposals like EIP-7701 and the more moderen EIP-8141 (Body Transactions) are pushing towards embedding sensible account logic immediately 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 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 inspiration 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 occasions immediately helps this.
Harden the L1
Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery
Harden the L1 is a brand new observe, and it displays one thing we expect deserves devoted focus: ensuring that as Ethereum scales and evolves, it retains the properties that make it beneficial within the first place.
This covers a number of areas:
- Safety: Fredrik continues to steer the Trillion Greenback Safety 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 observe’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 shopper 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 essential.
Trying 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 evident 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; anticipate extra data quickly. If you wish to comply with alongside or get entangled, protocol.ethereum.basis is the most effective place to begin.
Let’s preserve transport.
