Protocol Priorities Update for 2026

We introduced Protocol past June which organized our enactment astir 3 strategical initiatives: Scale L1, Scale Blobs, and Improve UX. A batch has happened since then! In this post, we privation to stock what we accomplished past year, however our reasoning has evolved, and wherever Protocol is headed successful 2026.

TL;DR

• Great advancement with tracks past twelvemonth arsenic we scaled L1, scaled blobs for L2, and built a beardown instauration for UX improvements.
• Announcing 3 caller tracks:
  • Scale (led by Ansgar, Marius, Raúl) focused connected consensus, execution, and blob scaling.
  • Improve UX (led by Barnabé and Matt) doubling down connected the enactment from past year.
  • Harden the L1 (led by Fredrik, Pari and Thomas) ensuring the halfway properties of Ethereum are preserved done it all.

A speedy look backmost astatine 2025

2025 was 1 of Ethereum's astir productive years astatine the protocol level. We shipped 2 large web upgrades and made meaningful advancement connected each beforehand we acceptable retired to tackle.

Pectra landed connected mainnet successful May, delivering EIP-7702 that lets EOAs temporarily execute astute declaration code, unlocking transaction batching, state sponsorship, and societal recovery. Pectra besides doubled blob throughput, raised the max effectual validator balance to 2,048 ETH, and dramatically shortened validator onboarding times.

Fusaka followed successful December, bringing PeerDAS to mainnet. Validators present illustration blob information alternatively than downloading it successful full, importantly reducing bandwidth requirements and enabling an 8x summation successful theoretical blob capacity. Two BPO (Blob Parameter Only) forks shipped alongside Fusaka, opening the ramp from 6 blobs per artifact toward higher targets.

Between the 2 upgrades, the assemblage steadily raised the mainnet state bounds from an archetypal 30M to today's 60M which is the archetypal important summation since 2021. History expiry removed pre-Merge information from afloat nodes, redeeming hundreds of gigabytes of disk space. And connected the UX side, the Open Intents Framework reached production, the L1 accelerated confirmation regularisation implementations progressed crossed statement clients, and interoperability standards specified arsenic ERC-7930 + ERC-7828: Interoperable addresses and names and ERC-7888: Crosschain Broadcaster moved forward.

It was a beardown year. But arsenic we looked astatine the roadworthy ahead, it became wide that our way operation needed to germinate to lucifer the needs of the Ethereum community.

An impactful 2026

When we launched Protocol, we organized astir 3 initiatives that mapped intimately to near-term deliverables: get the state bounds up, get PeerDAS shipped, and amended UX. That framing served america good done Pectra and Fusaka. Now that those milestones are down us, we person the accidental to deliberation astir however we signifier our enactment astatine a somewhat higher level.

Starting successful 2026, Protocol's enactment is organized into three tracks:

Scale

Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani

The Scale way brings unneurotic what was antecedently divided crossed Scale L1 and Scale Blobs into a single, unified effort. This reflects a applicable reality: the enactment of expanding L1 execution capableness and expanding information availability throughput is profoundly intertwined. Gas bounds increases beryllium connected execution motor performance. Blob scaling depends connected networking and statement changes that interaction the aforesaid lawsuit code. Coordinating these efforts nether 1 extortion makes america faster and reduces the aboveground country for a much holistic view.

Concretely, this way is focused on:

• Continuing to rise the state bounds toward and beyond 100M, supported by Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928) and ongoing lawsuit benchmarking
• Delivering the scaling components of Glamsterdam, including ePBS (EIP-7732), repricings, and further blob parameter increases
• Advancing the zkEVM attester lawsuit from prototype toward accumulation readiness
• State scaling involving repricing and past expiry successful the abbreviated term, and a determination to binary trees and statelessness successful the agelong term

Improve UX

Led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett

The Improve UX way carries guardant overmuch of the inaugural from past year, with a sharper absorption connected 2 areas that we judge are highest-leverage for Ethereum's usability successful 2026: native relationship abstraction and interoperability.

On relationship abstraction, EIP-7702 was an important step, but the extremity authorities is astute declaration wallets arsenic the default without bundlers, relayers, oregon other state overhead. Proposals similar EIP-7701 and the much caller EIP-8141 (Frame Transactions) are pushing toward embedding astute relationship logic straight into the protocol. This enactment besides intersects with post-quantum readiness, since autochthonal AA provides a earthy migration way distant from ECDSA-based authentication. Complementary to this are a fig of proposals successful the works that could marque it overmuch much gas-efficient to verify quantum-resistant signatures successful the EVM.

On interoperability, we're gathering connected the instauration laid by the Open Intents Framework. The extremity remains seamless, trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions and we're getting person time by day. Continued advancement connected faster L1 confirmations and shorter L2 colony times straight supports this.

Harden the L1

Led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery

Harden the L1 is simply a caller track, and it reflects thing we deliberation deserves dedicated focus: making definite that arsenic Ethereum scales and evolves, it retains the properties that marque it invaluable successful the archetypal place.

This covers respective areas:

• Security: Fredrik continues to pb the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative and is driving information hardening including post-quantum readiness, and execution-layer safeguards similar post-execution transaction assertions and trustless RPCs.
• Censorship resistance: Thomas leads the track's protocol resilience research, spanning FOCIL (EIP-7805) and its extensions: censorship absorption for blobs, statelessness (VOPS), and the improvement of measurable censorship absorption metrics crossed the ecosystem.
• Network resilience and testing: Parithosh's enactment connected devnets, testnets, and lawsuit interop investigating has been indispensable to each upgrade we've shipped. As we determination toward an accelerated fork cadence, the infrastructure for safely validating and deploying changes becomes adjacent much critical.

Looking ahead

Glamsterdam is the adjacent large web upgrade, targeted for the archetypal fractional of 2026, with Hegotá planned to travel aboriginal successful the year. The ambition is wide with parallel execution, importantly higher state limits, enshrined PBS, continued blob scaling, and advancement connected censorship resistance, autochthonal relationship abstraction, and post-quantum security.

We'll proceed publishing track-level updates arsenic we did past year; expect much accusation soon. If you privation to travel on oregon get involved, protocol.ethereum.foundation is the champion starting point.

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