Ethereum 2026: Interpreting EF's latest protocol roadmap and officially entering the "engineering upgrade" era?

February 18th, Ethereum Foundation (EF) released the “Protocol Priorities Update for 2026.” Compared to previous fragmented updates centered around EIPs, this roadmap resembles a strategic schedule, clarifying the upgrade pace, priority allocation, and the three main focus areas for the protocol layer in the coming year: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.

Behind this, from the successful delivery of two hard forks in 2025 (Pectra/Fusaka) to the early planning of dual mainline upgrades in 2026 (Glamsterdam and Hegotá), we see a deep shift toward “predictable engineering delivery” in Ethereum development. This may be the most significant protocol signal in recent years.

1. Ethereum in 2025: Turmoil and Institutionalization

If you follow Ethereum closely, you’ll know that 2025 was a year of contradictions for the protocol. ETH prices may have hovered low, but the protocol layer experienced unprecedented intensive changes.

Especially in early 2025, Ethereum went through a rather tumultuous period. At that time, EF was at the center of a storm of public opinion—community criticism was loud, and some even called for a “wartime CEO” to push reforms. Eventually, internal power struggles became public, leading to the highest-level leadership restructuring since EF’s founding:

• February: Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi was promoted to President, Vitalik Buterin pledged to rebuild the leadership team;
• Subsequently, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak became co-Executive Directors;
• Former researcher Danny Ryan led the new marketing narrative agency Etherealize;
• EF further restructured the board of directors, clarifying the values rooted in crypto punk principles;
• By mid-year, the foundation reorganized its R&D department, consolidating teams and personnel to focus on core protocol priorities.

This combination proved effective—Ethereum’s execution capability significantly strengthened. Notably, just seven months after the Pectra upgrade in May, the Fusaka upgrade was successfully implemented at the end of the year, demonstrating that EF, even after major leadership changes, still has the capacity to push significant updates. It also marked Ethereum’s transition into an accelerated development rhythm of “two hard forks per year.”

Since the network’s switch to PoS via The Merge in September 2022, Ethereum has generally aimed for one major upgrade annually, such as the Shapella upgrade in April 2023 and the Dencun upgrade in March 2024: the former enabling staked ETH withdrawals, a key step in PoS transition; the latter introducing EIP-4844, opening the Blob data channel, significantly reducing L2 costs.

In 2025, two major hard forks—Pectra and Fusaka—were completed. More importantly, 2025 was the first time a systematic two-year upgrade plan was laid out, with Glamsterdam and Hegotá as the upcoming milestones.

Although not explicitly mandated, interestingly, at the end of last year, The Block cited sources from Consensys stating that since The Merge, Ethereum researchers aimed for one major upgrade per year. Now, they plan to “accelerate the pace of hard forks to twice a year,” with Fusaka initiating a biannual upgrade cycle.

This “institutionalization” of upgrade rhythm is highly significant. The reason is simple: previously, release schedules depended heavily on development readiness, making the window unpredictable for developers and infrastructure providers. Those familiar know delays are common.

This also means that the successful delivery of two major upgrades in 2025 validates the feasibility of “upgrades twice a year.” The first systematic plan for two named upgrades in 2026 (Glamsterdam and Hegotá), along with the prioritization across three development tracks centered around these milestones, further institutionalizes this process.

In theory, this resembles the release cadence of Apple or Android systems, aiming to reduce developer uncertainty and bring three positive effects: increased predictability for L2s (e.g., Rollups can plan parameter adjustments and protocol adaptations in advance); clear windows for wallet and infrastructure compatibility, enabling product teams to plan feature rollouts accordingly; and stable risk assessment cycles for institutions, as upgrades become routine rather than emergency events.

This structured rhythm reflects engineering management and highlights Ethereum’s shift from research exploration to engineering delivery.

2. The “Three Pillars” of Protocol Development in 2026

Looking at the 2026 protocol priority update, EF no longer simply lists scattered EIPs but reorganizes protocol development into three strategic directions: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1.

First, Scale consolidates the previous “Scale L1” and “Scale blobs” initiatives because EF recognizes that L1 execution layer scaling and data availability layer expansion are two sides of the same coin.

In the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half of the year, the most notable technology is “Block-level Access Lists,” which aims to fundamentally change Ethereum’s current transaction execution model—shifting from a sequential “single-lane” process to parallel “multi-lane” processing:

• Block producers will precompute and mark which transactions can run concurrently without conflicts. Clients can then allocate transactions across multiple CPU cores for parallel processing, greatly improving efficiency.
• Meanwhile, ePBS (embedded proposer-builder separation) will be included in the upgrade. It will embed the current reliance on external relays like MEV-Boost into the protocol itself, reducing centralization risks and providing more time for validators to verify ZK proofs.

Alongside these low-level optimizations, the gas limit race in 2026 is expected to intensify. EF has set a target of “exceeding 100 million,” with aggressive predictions that, after ePBS, the gas limit could double to 200 million or higher. For L2s, increasing blob counts per block—potentially over 72—will support tens of thousands of transactions per second on L2 networks.

Next, Improve UX aims to eliminate cross-chain barriers, promote cross-chain interoperability, and enable native account abstraction. As mentioned earlier, EF believes that solving L2 fragmentation hinges on making Ethereum “feel like a single chain” again—this depends on the maturity of the “intent” architecture.

For example, the Open Intents Framework, launched by EF in collaboration with multiple teams, is becoming a universal standard. It allows users to transfer assets across L2s by simply declaring the “desired result,” with the underlying solver network calculating complex paths (see “When ‘Intent’ Becomes Standard: How OIF Ends Cross-Chain Fragmentation and Returns Web3 to User Intuition”). Further, the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) aims to build a trustless transmission layer, enabling cross-L2 transactions with user experience comparable to single-chain transactions (see “Ethereum Interop Roadmap: Unlocking the ‘Last Mile’ for Large-Scale Adoption”).

At the wallet level, native account abstraction remains a key focus. Following the first step with EIP-7702 in Pectra 2025, EF plans to push proposals like EIP-7701 or EIP-8141 in 2026. The ultimate goal is to make every wallet on Ethereum a smart contract wallet by default, eliminating complex EOA wallets and third-party gas relayers.

Additionally, implementing fast confirmation rules for L1 will drastically reduce confirmation times from 13-19 minutes to 15-30 seconds, directly benefiting cross-chain applications relying on L1 finality—crucial for bridges, stablecoin settlements, and RWA asset trading.

Finally, Harden the L1 targets trillion-dollar security defenses, driven by the increasing value locked in the Ethereum ecosystem. Security resilience at the L1 level is elevated to a strategic level.

In particular, in resisting censorship, FOCIL (Fork Choice Inclusion List, EIP-7805) is becoming a core solution. It grants multiple validators the power to enforce inclusion of specific transactions in blocks, ensuring that even if block producers attempt censorship, honest nodes will see transactions eventually included.

Facing the long-term threat of quantum computing, EF has assembled a new post-quantum (PQ) research team early this year. In 2026, work will focus on researching quantum-resistant signature algorithms and exploring seamless migration strategies to Ethereum mainnet, ensuring the security of billions of dollars’ worth of assets against future quantum attacks.

3. Ethereum’s “Collaborative” Future

Overall, if we had to summarize 2026 for Ethereum in one word, it might be “collaboration.”

Upgrades will no longer revolve around a single explosive innovation but will advance through the coordinated effort of three main tracks: Scale (throughput and cost), Improve UX (usability and adoption), and Harden the L1 (security and neutrality). These three jointly determine whether Ethereum can support the next decade of on-chain economy.

More than the technical roadmap, what’s more revealing is the strategic shift reflected by this “three-track” structure.

As mentioned earlier, when the Fusaka upgrade completes at the end of 2025 and the biannual hard fork rhythm is established, Ethereum effectively completes a “systematization” of its development model. The roadmap released at the start of 2026 further extends this institutionalization into technical planning—previously, upgrades often centered around a “star proposal” (like EIP-1559, Merge, EIP-4844). Now, upgrades are no longer driven by individual proposals but by the coordinated progress of three tracks.

From a macro perspective, 2026 is also a pivotal year for Ethereum’s “value narrative” reconstruction. In recent years, market valuation has largely been based on “L2 expansion and fee growth.” But as mainnet performance improves and L2 shifts from “sharding” to “trust spectrum,” Ethereum’s core value is being re-anchored as “the most secure settlement layer globally,” an irreplaceable position.

What does this mean? Simply put, Ethereum is transitioning from a platform reliant on “transaction fee revenue” to an asset anchored by “security premium.” The profound implications of this shift may gradually become apparent over the next few years—when stablecoin issuers, RWA tokenization firms, and sovereign wealth funds choose a settlement layer, they will prioritize security over cost.

Ethereum is evolving from a “technological experiment” into an “engineering delivery platform.” The institutionalization of protocol governance is likely to mature fully in 2026.

We may also be at a fascinating node: while underlying technologies become more complex (parallel execution, PQ algorithms), user experience is becoming simpler. The maturation of account abstraction and intent frameworks is pushing Ethereum toward that ideal endpoint—making Web3 intuitive for users.

If achieved, 2026 could see Ethereum transform from a blockchain experiment into a global financial infrastructure capable of supporting trillions of dollars in assets, with users unaware of the underlying protocols.