Ethereum Protocol Sets Up Three Tracks to Drive Scalability and Security Goals by 2026
TLDR:
Ethereum shipped Pectra and Fusakan in 2025, which doubled blob throughput and enabled verifiable data sampling via PeerDAS.
The new scale track integrates L1 and blob scale efforts, targeting a unified leadership of more than 100M gas constraints.
Improve the UX track will make local account summary and L2 interoperability as 2026 top priorities.
The new Harden the L1 track looks at post-quantum security, censorship resistance and network testing infrastructure.
The Ethereum protocol has announced a major structural change heading into 2026. The Ethereum Foundation's protocol team has organized its work into three core tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
This follows Effective 2025, which saw two major network upgrades. The restructuring reflects a more mature approach to developing the Ethereum infrastructure. It also lays out a clear roadmap for the year ahead, covering scalability, usability and network security.
The Ethereum protocol reflects on productivity in 2025
The Ethereum protocol shipped two major updates in 2025: Pectra in May and Fusaka in December. Pectra introduced EIP-7702, which allowed foreign-owned accounts to temporarily execute smart contract code.
This has enabled consumer marketing volume, gas sponsorships and social recovery. Pectra also doubled the blob flow and increased the maximum effective validating balance to 2,048 ETH.
Fusaka brought PeerDAS to the mainnet by changing how validators handle blob data. Rather than downloading an entire blob of data, validators now sample it, cutting bandwidth requirements.
This change resulted in an 8x increase in theoretical blob capacity. Only two more blob gauge forks are shipped with Fusaka to start raising the blobs on each block.
Beyond the two forks, the mainnet gas limit has been increased from 30M to 60M by 2025.
Timeout history also removed pre-merge data from entire nodes, saving hundreds of gigabytes of disk space. On the UX side, the open concept framework reached production and cross-chain address levels moved forward.
These achievements make 2025 one of the most active years on the Ethereum protocol stage. Behind those deliveries, the team saw an opportunity to restructure.
The new track model stays away from milestones. Instead, it organizes work around long-term goals.
Three tracks now guide the direction of the Ethereum protocol.
Scale Track combines two previously separate efforts: Scale L1 and Scale Blobs. Led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden and Raoul Kripalani, it targets more than 100M gas constraints.
The track also covers ePBS, zkEVM client development and statelessness research. Blob scaling and execution scaling are treated as one connected effort.
The Optimize UX track, led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, focuses on abstraction and collaboration. EIP-7701 and EIP-8141 are pushing smart account logic directly into the protocol.
The work here deals with post-quantum readiness, as native label summation provides a natural way away from ECCDSA. Cross-L2 interoperability and rapid authentication remain central priorities.
The Harden the L1 track is completely new and is directed by Fredrik Svantes, Paritosh Jayanthi and Thomas Thierry. Frederick leads a trillion dollar security initiative covering post-quantum hardening and trustless RPCs.
Thomas focuses on censorship resistance research, including FOCIL (EIP-7805) and quantifiable resistance metrics. Paritosh manages devnets, testnets and client interaction testing infrastructure.
Glamsterdam is the next planned network upgrade, targeting the first half of 2026. Hegota is expected to follow later this year.
