Ethereum Foundation Sets 2026 Protocol Priorities Following Major Network Upgrades

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a restructuring of its protocol development strategy for 2026, introducing three updated work tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.

The update follows what the Foundation described as one of Ethereum’s most productive years at the protocol level, marked by two major mainnet upgrades — Pectra and Fusaka — and sustained increases in network capacity.

2025 Milestones: Scaling and Infrastructure Gains

In May, the Pectra upgrade introduced EIP-7702, enabling externally owned accounts (EOAs) to temporarily execute smart contract code. The change unlocked features such as transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and social recovery mechanisms. Pectra also doubled blob throughput, increased the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, and shortened validator onboarding times.

Fusaka followed in December, bringing PeerDAS to mainnet. The implementation allows validators to sample blob data rather than download it entirely, reducing bandwidth requirements and enabling an eightfold increase in theoretical blob capacity.

The network’s gas limit was also raised from 30 million to 60 million — the first significant increase since 2021 — while history expiry reduced full node storage requirements by removing pre-Merge data. On the interoperability front, standards such as ERC-7930, ERC-7828, and ERC-7888 progressed alongside the production rollout of the Open Intents Framework.

2026 Structure: Three Unified Tracks

Scale

Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani, the Scale track merges previous efforts around L1 execution scaling and blob expansion into a unified initiative.

Key objectives include:

• Raising the gas limit toward and beyond 100 million
• Implementing scaling components of the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade
• Advancing zkEVM attester clients toward production readiness
• Progressing long-term state scaling initiatives, including statelessness

The Foundation noted that execution performance, networking improvements, and consensus updates are increasingly interdependent, requiring tighter coordination.

Improve UX

Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, this track focuses on native account abstraction and interoperability.

Following EIP-7702, proposals such as EIP-7701 and EIP-8141 aim to embed smart contract wallet functionality directly into the protocol. The goal is to enable smart accounts without reliance on bundlers or relayers, while also supporting future migration paths toward post-quantum cryptography.

On interoperability, continued development of cross-layer communication frameworks aims to enable seamless, trust-minimized interactions between L2 networks, supported by faster L1 confirmations and reduced settlement times.

Harden the L1

The newly introduced Harden the L1 track reflects a shift toward safeguarding Ethereum’s foundational properties as scaling accelerates.

Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery, this initiative spans:

• Post-quantum security and execution-layer safeguards
• Censorship resistance research, including FOCIL (EIP-7805)
• Network resilience, devnet and testnet coordination, and client interoperability testing

The Foundation emphasized that as upgrade cadence accelerates, rigorous validation infrastructure will become increasingly critical.

Upcoming Upgrades: Glamsterdam and Hegotá

The next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, is targeted for the first half of 2026, with Hegotá planned later in the year. Proposed features include:

• Parallel execution
• Further gas limit increases
• Enshrined proposer-builder separation (PBS)
• Continued blob scaling
• Progress on censorship resistance and native account abstraction

Strategic Shift

With Pectra and Fusaka milestones completed, the Ethereum Foundation’s 2026 framework reflects a move from discrete deliverables toward a more integrated approach centered on scalability, usability, and protocol resilience.

The Foundation stated it will continue publishing track-level updates as development progresses.