On February 18, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) released the "Protocol Priorities Update for 2026." Compared to the previous fragmented updates centered around EIPs, this roadmap more closely resembles a strategic schedule, clarifying the upgrade cadence, priority allocation, and the three main themes that the protocol layer will revolve around in the coming year: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
Behind this, from the successful delivery of two hard forks (Pectra/Fusaka) in 2025 to the advanced planning of the dual mainlines for 2026, Glamsterdam and Hegotá, we are also witnessing a deeper shift in Ethereum development towards "predictable engineering delivery." And this might be the most important protocol layer signal in recent years.
I. Ethereum of 2025: Turmoil and Institutionalization in Parallel
If you have been following Ethereum consistently, you would know that 2025 was a year of intertwined contradictions for this protocol. While the ETH price might have hovered at low levels, the protocol layer underwent unprecedented intensive changes.
Especially in early 2025, Ethereum went through a rather awkward period. The EF was once at the center of a public opinion storm—community criticism surged, with some even calling for the introduction of a so-called "wartime CEO" to drive change. Eventually, a series of internal struggles became public, forcing the highest-level power restructuring since the EF's founding:
- In February, Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi was promoted to President, and Vitalik Buterin promised to restructure the leadership;
- Subsequently, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak were appointed as Co-Executive Directors;
- Furthermore, the new marketing agency Etherealize, led by former researcher Danny Ryan, was established;
- Simultaneously, the EF further restructured its board of directors, clarifying its cypherpunk value orientation;
- By mid-year, the Foundation also restructured its R&D department, integrating teams and making personnel adjustments to ensure a focus on core protocol priorities;
As it turned out, this combination of measures significantly hardened Ethereum's execution capability. Particularly, just 7 months after the Pectra upgrade in May, the Fusaka upgrade at the end of the year was successfully deployed, proving that the EF, despite undergoing major leadership changes, still has the ability to drive significant updates. This also marks Ethereum's official entry into an accelerated development rhythm of "two hard forks per year."
After all, since the network transitioned to PoS via The Merge in September 2022, the Ethereum network has basically aimed for only one major upgrade per year, such as the Shapella upgrade in April 2023 and the Dencun upgrade in March 2024: the former opened staking withdrawals, completing a key part of the PoS transition; the latter launched EIP-4844, formally opening the Blob data channel, which significantly reduced L2 costs.
In contrast, 2025 saw the completion of two important hard fork upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka. More crucially, 2025 saw the first systematic planning of named upgrades for the next two years, namely Glamsterdam and Hegotá.
Although not formally stipulated, interestingly, at the end of last year, The Block cited sources from Consensys stating that since The Merge, Ethereum researchers had aimed for one major upgrade per year, but they were now planning to "accelerate the pace of hard fork releases to once every six months," and explicitly stated that Fusaka initiated Ethereum's twice-yearly upgrade cycle.
It can be said that this "institutional" change regarding the upgrade cadence is quite milestone. The reason is simple: the previous release rhythm depended more on R&D readiness. For developers and infrastructure providers, the expected window was not stable, and as those familiar know, delays were not uncommon.
This also means that the successful delivery of two major upgrades in 2025 validated the feasibility of "upgrades every six months." The first systematic planning of two named upgrades (Glamsterdam and Hegotá) for 2026, with three development tracks arranging priorities around these two nodes, is a further step towards institutionalized implementation.
Theoretically, it's somewhat similar to the release rhythm of Apple or Android systems, aiming to reduce uncertainty for developers and is expected to bring three positive impacts: Enhanced predictability for L2s, for example, Rollups can plan parameter adjustments and protocol adaptations in advance; Clear adaptation windows for wallets and infrastructure, allowing product teams to plan compatibility and feature releases according to the rhythm; Stable risk assessment periods for institutions, as upgrades are no longer sudden events but an engineering norm.
This structured rhythm is essentially a manifestation of engineering management and also highlights, from the side, Ethereum's transition from scientific exploration to engineering delivery.
II. The "Three Legs" of 2026 Protocol Development
Looking closely at the 2026 protocol priority update plan, one will also find that the EF no longer simply lists scattered EIPs, but has reorganized protocol development into three strategic directions: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.
First is Scale, which merges the previous "Scale L1" and "Scale blobs," as the EF realized that scaling the L1 execution layer and widening the data availability layer are two sides of the same coin.
Therefore, in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half of the year, the most eye-catching technology is "Block-level Access Lists," aimed at fundamentally changing Ethereum's current transaction execution model—it can be understood as changing from a sequentially processed "single lane" to a parallel processed "multi-lane":
Block producers will pre-calculate and mark which transactions can run simultaneously without conflict, and clients can accordingly distribute transactions to multiple CPU cores for parallel processing, greatly improving efficiency; Meanwhile, ePBS (enshrined proposer-builder separation) will also be included in the upgrade. It embeds the MEV-Boost process, which currently relies on external relays, into the protocol itself, not only reducing centralization risks but also reserving a more ample time window for validators to verify ZK proofs.
Alongside these underlying optimizations, the race for the Gas limit will intensify in 2026. The EF has clearly stated the goal is to "move towards 100 million and above." More radical predictions suggest that after ePBS, the Gas limit could potentially double to 200 million or even higher. For L2s, the increase in blob count is equally crucial, with the number of data blobs per block expected to increase to 72 or more, supporting L2 networks processing hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.
Second is Improve UX, aimed at eliminating cross-chain barriers and popularizing cross-chain interoperability and native account abstraction. As mentioned earlier, the EF believes the core to solving L2 fragmentation is making Ethereum "feel like one chain again." This vision relies on the maturation of the intent architecture.
For example, the Open Intents Framework, launched by the EF jointly with several teams, is becoming a universal standard. It allows users to simply declare the "desired outcome" when transferring assets between L2s, while the complex path calculation is completed by a solver network behind the scenes (Extended reading: When "Intents" Become the Standard: How OIF Ends Cross-Chain Fragmentation and Returns Web3 to User Intuition?); Going further, the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) attempts to build a trustless transport layer, aiming to give cross-L2 transactions an experience indistinguishable from single-chain transactions (Extended reading: Ethereum Interop Roadmap: How to Unlock the 'Last Mile' of Mass Adoption).
At the wallet level, native account abstraction will still be a key focus this year. Following the first step with EIP-7702 in the 2025 Pectra upgrade, the EF plans to promote proposals like EIP-7701 or EIP-8141 in 2026, with the ultimate goal of making every wallet on Ethereum a smart contract wallet by default, completely abolishing complex EOA wallets and additional Gas payment intermediaries.
Furthermore, the implementation of L1 fast confirmation rules will drastically reduce confirmation times from the current 13-19 minutes to 15-30 seconds. This will directly benefit all cross-chain applications relying on L1 finality, which is significant for cross-chain bridges, stablecoin settlements, and RWA asset trading.
Finally, Harden the L1, aiming at a trillion-dollar security defense line. This is also thanks to the fact that as the value locked in the Ethereum ecosystem continues to grow, the security resilience of the L1 layer has been elevated to a strategic height.
Regarding anti-censorship, FOCIL (Fork Choice Inclusion List, EIP-7805) is becoming a core solution. It grants multiple validators the power to强制要求 specific transactions be included in a block. Even if a block producer attempts censorship, as long as part of the network is honest, the user's transaction will eventually be included on-chain.
Facing the long-term threat of quantum computing, the EF formed a new Post-Quantum (PQ) research team at the beginning of the year. The work in 2026 will focus on researching quantum-resistant signature algorithms and beginning to consider how to seamlessly migrate them to the Ethereum mainnet, ensuring the security of future tens of billions of dollars in assets is not threatened by quantum algorithm cracking.
III. A More "Collaborative" Ethereum is Here
Overall, if one word were to summarize Ethereum in 2026, it might be "collaboration."
Upgrades no longer revolve around a single explosive innovation but around the collaborative advancement of three main lines: Scale handles throughput and cost; Improve UX handles usability and adoption; Harden the L1 handles security and neutrality. These three together determine whether Ethereum can support the on-chain economy of the next decade.
At the same time, more noteworthy than the technical roadmap is the strategic shift reflected behind this "three-track" structure.
As mentioned above, when the Fusaka upgrade was successfully completed at the end of 2025 and the rhythm of two hard forks per year was established, Ethereum actually completed a "institutionalized" leap in its development model. The priority update released at the beginning of 2026 further extends this institutionalization to the planning level of technical directions—in the past, Ethereum upgrades often revolved around a certain "star proposal" (like EIP-1559, The Merge, EIP-4844). Now, upgrades are no longer defined by a single proposal but by the collaborative advancement of three tracks.
From a more macro perspective, 2026 is also a crucial year for the重构 (reconstruction/reframing) of Ethereum's "value narrative." In the past few years, the market's pricing of Ethereum revolved more around "fee growth brought by L2 scaling." As the mainnet performance improves and the positioning of L2s shifts from "shards" to a "trust spectrum," Ethereum's core value is being re-anchored to the irreplaceable position of "the world's most secure settlement layer."
What does this mean? Simply put, Ethereum is transitioning from a platform relying on "transaction fee revenue" to an asset anchor relying on a "security premium." The profound impact of this转变 (transition/change) may gradually manifest in the coming years—when stablecoin issuers, RWA tokenization institutions, and sovereign wealth funds choose a settlement layer, they are not choosing the cheapest network, but the most secure one.
Ethereum is tangibly evolving from a "technology testing ground" to an "engineering delivery platform." The institutionalization of Ethereum protocol governance may truly mature in 2026.
And we might be at a奇妙 (wonderful/peculiar) node: the underlying technology is becoming increasingly complex (like parallel execution, PQ algorithms), but the user experience is becoming simpler. The maturation of account abstraction and intent frameworks is pushing Ethereum towards that ideal endpoint—returning Web3 to user intuition.
If it can truly achieve this, the Ethereum of 2026 might indeed transform from a blockchain testing ground into a global financial base layer capable of supporting trillions of dollars in assets, where users don't need to understand the underlying protocol.
