Ethereum Foundation Maps 2026 Protocol Priorities as Major Upgrades Near
The Ethereum Foundation’s protocol monitor leads revealed a brand new “Protocol Priorities Update for 2026” on Feb. 18, outlining how core R&D will probably be organized this yr and what the subsequent improve cycle is predicted to emphasise.
Ethereum’s Priorities In 2026
The update seems again at 2025 as a high-throughput yr for mainnet modifications, anchored by two community upgrades. Pectra shipped in May, Fusaka adopted in December with PeerDAS on mainnet. Alongside these upgrades, the group elevated the mainnet gasoline restrict from 30 million to 60 million, calling it the primary important bounce since 2021.
The essential change is organizational. “Now that these milestones are behind us, we now have the chance to consider how we set up our work at a barely larger degree,” the authors wrote. For 2026, Protocol work is grouped into three tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1, every with named leads.
The Scale monitor, led by Ansgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, and Raúl Kripalani, merges final yr’s “Scale L1” and “Scale Blobs” initiatives into one effort. The basis frames this as a practical consolidation, as a result of execution capability, networking, and consensus modifications are likely to land in the identical shopper code and affect one another.
On the roadmap, the replace highlights continued gasoline restrict will increase “towards and past 100M,” supported by block-level entry lists through EIP-7928 and ongoing shopper benchmarking. It additionally flags “the scaling parts of Glamsterdam,” together with enshrined PBS by EIP-7732, repricings, and additional blob parameter will increase.
Beyond that, the Scale monitor contains pushing a zkEVM attester shopper from prototype towards manufacturing readiness, and longer-run state scaling work that spans near-term repricing and historical past expiry by to binary timber and statelessness.
The Improve UX monitor, led by Barnabé Monnot and Matt Garnett, narrows in on two areas the inspiration calls essentially the most leverage for 2026 usability: native account abstraction and interoperability.
On account abstraction, the replace positions EIP-7702 as a step towards an endpoint the place sensible contract wallets turn into the default with out bundlers, relayers, or additional gasoline overhead. It factors to proposals together with EIP-7701 and EIP-8141, described as “Frame Transactions,” as work that strikes sensible account logic deeper into the protocol itself.
That UX roadmap can be tied to safety path. The basis argues native account abstraction offers a cleaner migration path away from ECDSA-based authentication, and says parallel proposals intention to make quantum-resistant signature verification meaningfully cheaper contained in the EVM.
Interoperability work builds on the Open Intents Framework with the said aim of “seamless, trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions,” supported by sooner L1 confirmations and shorter L2 settlement occasions.
The new Harden the L1 monitor, led by Fredrik Svantes, Parithosh Jayanthi, and Thomas Thiery, is framed as insurance coverage coverage work that preserves Ethereum’s core properties whereas scaling continues.
The replace ties safety efforts to Svantes’ Trillion Dollar Security Initiative, together with post-quantum readiness and execution-layer safeguards like post-execution transaction assertions and “trustless RPCs.”
On censorship resistance, Thiery’s scope contains FOCIL through EIP-7805 and extensions that contact censorship resistance for blobs, statelessness work labeled VOPS, and the event of measurable censorship-resistance metrics. Jayanthi’s remit covers devnets, testnets, and shopper interoperability testing, which the inspiration says turns into extra vital if Ethereum strikes right into a sooner fork cadence.
Looking forward, the inspiration targets Glamsterdam for the primary half of 2026, with Hegotá deliberate later within the yr. The said ambition bundles parallel execution, considerably larger gasoline limits, enshrined PBS, continued blob scaling, and progress on censorship resistance, native account abstraction, and post-quantum safety, with extra track-level updates promised as the yr unfolds.
At press time, Ethereum traded at $1,968.