Recently, the Ethereum Foundation dropped out the most ambitious roadmap for Ethereum in years, which looks more like a strategic schedule compared to previous fragmented updates, and clearly states priority allocation, the pace of the developments, and the three main aspects that the protocol layer will focus on in the coming year, namely scaling, improving UX, and hardening the layer 1. But that’s not all: from the successful delivery of the Pectra and Fusaka hard forks in 2025 to the early planning of the Glamsterdam and Hegota dual mainlines in 2026, Ethereum development has experienced a profound transformation toward what’s called “predictable engineering delivery”, which likely is the most critical protocol layer signal over these past few years.
For anyone eager to learn how to buy Ethereum and join the ecosystem, as well as for veterans, understanding how Ethereum will evolve is essential, as it will deeply impact the ecosystem, and we’re here to help decipher the latest EF protocol roadmap. So, without further ado, let’s dive in.
In 2025, emotions toward the Ethereum protocol were mixed. While its price has been staying at a low level, the protocol layer has gone through intensive changes. Earlier in the year, the project went through a rather awkward period because community criticism was rampant, and some even wanted a “wartime CEO” who could drive change. After internal power struggles became public, EF went through a high-level power restructuring, including in the leadership team, executive directors, research and development department, and so on. These measures helped strengthen the execution of Ethereum capabilities.
The implementation of Fusaka in particular demonstrated that EF could still drive major updates despite facing a significant leadership reshuffle, and at the same time, this marked the official entry of Ethereum into a rapid development pace of two hard forks yearly. This change is a landmark achievement: previously, the release schedule was tied to the readiness of R&D, and the anticipated window was unstable for infrastructure and developers alike. The successful delivery of the Fusaka and Pectra upgrades in 2025 played a role in verifying the feasibility of “upgrades every six months” as well, while the systematic planning of the Glamsterdam and Hegota upgrades in 2026, and prioritization of the two nodes with three development tracks, represents a further institutionalization. These recent changes showcase the transformation of Ethereum from scientific research to engineering delivery.
The 2026 protocol priority update plan makes it clear that EF is focusing on reorganizing protocol development into Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1 – three clear and strategic directions. Scale merges the “Scale L1” and “Scale blobs”, and that’s because EF came to the conclusion that scaling up the L1 execution layer and expanding the data availability layer are closely related. The most groundbreaking tech in the Glamdsterdam upgrade, which is planned for the first half of the year, is “Block-level Access Lists”, which is meant to change the current transaction execution model of Ethereum. ePBS, or built-in proposer-builder separation, will also be part of the upgrade, embedding the MEV-Boost process ( which relies on external relays at the moment) into the protocol, reducing the centralization risk and offering validators a more ample time window to check ZK proofs. Optimists believe that after the ePBS, the gas limit will be higher than 200 million, while the number of data blocks per block will increase to more than 72 to help support the L2 network to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.
Furthermore, Improve UX is designed to eliminate cross-chain barriers while popularizing cross-chain interoperability alongside native account abstraction. To solve L2 fragmentation, EF is planning to make Ethereum “feel like a chain again”. To this end, they are making the Open Intents Framework a universal standard, enabling users to declare their “desired result” when assets are transferred between L2 blockchains. Meanwhile, the underlying solver network conducts the complex path calculations. The Ethereum Interoperability Layer ( EIL) attempts to create a trustless transport layer with the goal of providing cross-L2 transactions that offer an experience that is indistinguishable from single-chain transactions. Through the implementation of the L2 quick confirmation rule, the confirmation time will be reduced to 15-30 seconds from the current 13-19 minutes, which will benefit cross-chain applications relying on L1 finality.
Lastly, Harden the L1 aims to offer a trillion-dollar security defense, due to the fact that the security resilience of the L1 layer has increased to a strategic level as the value locked in the Ethereum ecosystem keeps growing. EF has created a new post-quantum research team in response to the quantum computing threat, and in 2026, its focus will be on researching quantum-resistant signature algorithms and determining how to migrate them effectively to the Ethereum mainnet so that, in the future, quantum algorithms won’t threaten the security of billions of dollars of assets.
In recent years, the pricing of Ethereum in the market was centered around the “feed increase brought about by L2 scaling”, but with the development of mainnet performance and the transition of L2’s positioning to trust spectrum, the core value of Ethereum is now re-anchored to its unique status as the most secure settlement layer in the world. In other words, Ethereum is evolving into an asset anchor relying on “security premium”, and this transformation is expected to have a profound impact that will become apparent in the next few years, when RWA tokenization institutions, stablecoin issuers, and sovereign wealth funds will select not the cheapest network, but the most secure that exists. In 2026, the institutionalization of the protocol governance may genuinely mature this year, with Ethereum becoming an “engineering delivery platform”.
2026 is indeed shaping up to be a transformative year for Ethereum: the underlying technology is evolving into a more complex one, while the user experience is becoming more straightforward, marking a peculiar juncture. The maturity of intent frameworks and account abstraction is also pushing Ethereum toward the endpoint where Web3 is brought back to user intuition, and if this happens this year, Ethereum could become a global financial foundation that can support trillions of dollars in assets without users needing to understand the underlying protocol. The future looks promising, so undoubtedly, it’s worth keeping an eye on the upgrades.
