Ethereum prepares a controversial 2026 overhaul that will forcibly strip power from the network’s most dominant players

Ethereum completed its Fusaka upgrade on Dec. 3, marking one of the network’s most essential steps toward long-term scalability.

The upgrade builds on a series of changes since the 2022 Merge and follows the earlier Dencun and Pectra releases, which lowered Layer 2 fees and increased blob capacity.

Fusaka goes further by restructuring how Ethereum confirms that data is available, widening the channel through which Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base post their compressed transaction batches.

It does this through a new system called PeerDAS, which allows Ethereum to verify large volumes of transaction data without requiring every node to download it.

Buterin says Fusaka is ‘incomplete’

However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin cautioned that Fusaka should not be viewed as a completed version of sharding, the network’s long-term scaling plan.

Buterin noted that PeerDAS represents the first working implementation of data sharding. However, he noted that several critical components remain unfinished.

According to him, Ethereum can now make more data available, and at lower cost, but the full system envisioned over the past decade still requires work across multiple layers of the protocol.

Considering this, Buterin highlighted three gaps in Fusaka’s sharding.

First, Ethereum’s base layer still processes transactions sequentially, meaning execution throughput has not increased alongside the new data capacity.

Secondly, block builders, specialized actors who assemble transactions into blocks, continue to download full data payloads even though validators no longer need to, which creates a centralization risk as data volumes grow.

Lastly, Ethereum still uses a single global mempool, forcing every node to process the same pending transactions and limiting the network’s scalability.

His message essentially frames Fusaka as the foundation for the next development cycle. He stated:

“The next two years will give us time to refine the PeerDAS mechanism, carefully increase its scale while we continue to ensure its stability, use it to scale L2s, and then when ZK-EVMs are mature, turn it inwards to scale ethereum L1 gas as well.”

Glamsterdam becomes the next focal point

The most immediate successor to Fusaka is the Glamsterdam upgrade, targeted for 2026.

If Fusaka expands Ethereum’s data bandwidth, Glamsterdam seeks to ensure that the network can handle the operational load that comes with it.

The headline feature is enshrined proposer-builder separation, known as ePBS. This change shifts block construction into the protocol itself, reducing Ethereum’s dependence on a handful of external block builders who currently dominate the market.

As data volumes rise under Fusaka, those builders would gain even more influence. ePBS is meant to prevent that outcome by formalizing how builders bid for blocks and how validators participate in the process.

Running alongside ePBS is a complementary feature called block-level access lists. These lists require builders to specify which parts of Ethereum’s state a block will touch before execution begins.

Client teams say this allows software to schedule tasks more efficiently and lays the groundwork for future parallelization. This would be an essential step as the network prepares for heavier computational loads.

Together, ePBS and access lists form the core of Glamsterdam’s market and performance reforms. They are viewed as structural prerequisites for operating a high-capacity data system without sacrificing decentralization.

Other planned Ethereum upgrades

Beyond Glamsterdam lies another roadmap milestone, the Verge, centered on Verkle trees.

This system restructures how Ethereum stores and verifies the network’s state.

Instead of requiring full nodes to store the entire state locally, Verkle trees enable them to verify blocks with compact proofs, significantly reducing storage requirements. Notably, this was partially addressed in Fusaka.

For node operators and validators, this aligns with one of Ethereum’s core priorities: ensuring that running a node remains accessible without enterprise-grade hardware.

This work matters because Fusaka’s success increases the amount of data Ethereum can ingest. Still, without changes to state management, the cost of keeping up with the chain could eventually climb.

The Verge aims to ensure the opposite, and that Ethereum becomes easier to run even as it processes more data.

From thereon, Ethereum would focus on updates to the Purge, a long-term effort to remove accumulated historical data and retire technical debt, making the protocol lighter and easier to operate.

Beyond those changes is the Splurge, a collection of upgrades designed to refine the user and developer experience.

This would be achieved through improvements to account abstraction, new approaches to MEV mitigation, and ongoing cryptographic enhancements

A global settlement layer

Taken together, these updates form successive stages of the same ambition:

“Ethereum is positioning itself as a global settlement layer capable of supporting millions of transactions per second through its Layer 2 ecosystem while maintaining the security guarantees of its base chain.”

Long-time ecosystem figures increasingly echo that framing. Joseph Lubin, an Ethereum co-founder, noted:

“The world economy will be built on Ethereum.”

Lubin pointed to the network’s nearly decade-long uninterrupted operation and its role in settling more than $25 trillion in value last year.

He also noted that Ethereum currently hosts the largest share of stablecoins, tokenized assets, and real-world asset issuances, and that ETH itself has become a productive asset through staking, restaking, and DeFi infrastructure.

His remarks capture the broader thesis behind the current roadmap: a settlement platform that can run continuously, absorb global financial activity, and remain open to any participant who wants to validate or transact.

That future depends on three outcomes, according to CoinGecko. The network must remain scalable, enabling rollups to process large volumes of activity at predictable costs. It must remain secure, relying on thousands of independent validators whose ability to participate is not restricted by hardware demands.  And it must remain decentralized, ensuring that anyone can run a node or validator without specialized equipment.