In 2025, Ethereum successfully completed two important upgrades, Pectra and Fusaka. In 2026, Ethereum's pace remains tight, with two major upgrades (hard forks) planned: Glamsterdam (around mid-year) and Heze-Bogota (around year-end). These upgrades aim to further advance Ethereum in terms of TPS, privacy, and security.
The Glamsterdam upgrade focuses on making Ethereum faster and cheaper, primarily through parallel processing, increased Gas limits, ZK proof verification, and more.
Parallel processing means that currently, Ethereum operates like a single-lane road, processing transactions one by one, which can lead to congestion. Parallel processing enables multi-lane operation, allowing multiple transactions to be processed simultaneously. This can significantly boost Ethereum's speed.
Gas limit increase: Gas is the "fuel fee" for transactions. Currently, each block has a limit of 60 million units. After the upgrade, this could be raised to 200 million (or even 300 million), allowing more transactions to be included in a single block.
ZK proof verification: Previously, validators had to re-run all transactions repeatedly to check for correctness. With ZK proofs, results can be verified directly, saving time, effort, and costs, making the process more efficient.
Parallel processing + Gas limit increase + ZK proof verification—if the upgrade proceeds as planned in 2026 (this premise is crucial)—Ethereum L1 is expected to gradually achieve the goal of 10,000 TPS. Combined with the expansion of Blobs (potentially up to 72 or more), L2 TPS will also see a significant increase. After the 2026 upgrades, Ethereum's ecosystem will largely be capable of handling various application scenarios in terms of performance.
The Heze-Bogota upgrade primarily addresses privacy and security shortcomings.
For example, it introduces Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), a mechanism that allows multiple validators to collaboratively force certain transactions into blocks, ensuring transactions proceed smoothly even if malicious actors attempt censorship, thereby enhancing resistance to suppression. It will also strengthen privacy protection, making transaction details harder to窥探, such as through better encryption or anonymity technologies. Additionally, it will promote decentralization, reducing reliance on a few large nodes and making the network more distributed and less susceptible to manipulation or attacks.
The above is currently a展望, and specific implementations may change over time. Stay tuned for updates on the progress of the actual rollout plans.
