Ethereum has two significant upgrades in 2025, Pectra and Fusaka, which have been successfully completed. In 2026, Ethereum will remain on a tight schedule with plans for two major upgrades (hard forks): one is Glamsterdam (around mid-year), and the other is Heze-Bogota (around year-end). These upgrades aim to further enhance Ethereum's TPS, privacy, and security.
The Glamsterdam upgrade aims to make Ethereum faster and cheaper, primarily focusing on several aspects: parallel processing, an increase in the Gas limit, and ZK proof verification.
Parallel processing refers to Ethereum's current single-lane system where transactions are processed one by one, leading to potential congestion. Parallel processing enables multi-lane operation, allowing multiple transactions to be handled simultaneously. This can significantly speed up Ethereum’s performance.
The increase in the Gas limit means that Gas, the 'fuel fee' for transactions, will rise from the current 60 million units per block to 200 million (or even 300 million) after the upgrade. As a result, each Ethereum block can accommodate more transactions.
ZK proof verification allows validators to directly verify results instead of repeatedly rerunning all transactions to check for errors. This saves time, effort, and cost while improving efficiency.
With parallel processing, an increased Gas limit, and ZK proof verification, if Ethereum can complete the upgrades as planned in 2026 (this premise is crucial), Ethereum Layer 1 has the potential to gradually achieve the TPS target.
The goal is to reach 10,000 TPS, along with the continued expansion of Blob (which may increase to 72 or more), significantly boosting Layer 2's TPS. After the 2026 upgrade, Ethereum's ecosystem performance should be sufficient to support various current application scenarios.
The Heze-Bogota upgrade primarily focuses on addressing privacy and security gaps.
For example, introducing Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists (abbreviated as FOCIL), a mechanism that allows multiple validators to collaborate and forcibly include specific transactions in blocks. This ensures that even if malicious actors in the network attempt censorship, transactions can still proceed smoothly, enhancing resistance to suppression; it will strengthen privacy protection, making transaction details harder to inspect by others through better encryption or anonymity techniques; promote decentralization, reduce reliance on a few large nodes, and make the entire network more distributed and less vulnerable to manipulation or attacks.
The above is only the current outlook; specific implementations may change over time. Stay updated on the progress of concrete implementation plans.
Editor/Doris
