Ethereum Foundation sets three new tracks for 2026
The Ethereum Foundation’s protocol team is reshaping its 2026 roadmap after a year of upgrades that boosted capacity and set the stage for broader usability changes.
In a February 18 update, the team said its “Protocol” effort will now be organized around three tracks—Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1—reflecting a shift from tightly scoped milestones toward a more integrated approach to scaling, security, and user-facing improvements.
A busy 2025 sets the stage
The foundation said “2025 was one of Ethereum's most productive years at the protocol level,” pointing to two mainnet upgrades: Pectra in May and Fusaka in December. Pectra shipped EIP-7702, which allows externally owned accounts to temporarily execute smart contract code, a change meant to unlock features such as transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and social recovery. The same upgrade also doubled blob throughput, raised the maximum effective validator balance to 2,048 ETH, and shortened validator onboarding times.
Fusaka followed with PeerDAS on mainnet, letting validators sample blob data rather than downloading it in full—an efficiency shift designed to reduce bandwidth requirements and enable an eightfold increase in theoretical blob capacity. The update was paired with “Blob Parameter Only” forks that began moving the network from 6 blobs per block toward higher targets.
Three tracks for 2026
“Starting in 2026, Protocol's work is organized into three tracks,” the post said. The Scale track, led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani, merges work previously split between L1 execution scaling and blob scaling, including a push to raise the gas limit “toward and beyond 100M” and deliver scaling components tied to the next major upgrade, Glamsterdam.
Improve UX, led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, will focus on native account abstraction and interoperability, building on efforts such as the Open Intents Framework. Harden the L1, led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery, adds dedicated emphasis on security, censorship resistance, and testing infrastructure as the protocol evolves.
What comes next
The team said Glamsterdam is targeted for the first half of 2026, with Hegotá planned later in the year.
Ethereum is trying to scale faster and improve wallet UX while preserving the properties—security and censorship resistance—that underpin trust in the network, a balancing act that will shape how institutions and everyday users engage with on-chain applications.
Read also: Ethereum Foundation considers relaunching DAO a decade after hack
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