The Ethereum Foundation officially released its comprehensive protocol priorities for 2026 on February 18, 2026, organizing its development efforts into three distinct tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1. Following a highly productive 2025 that saw the successful implementation of the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades, the non-profit organization is now shifting its focus toward a long-term “world computer” architecture. The 2026 roadmap is designed to address the persistent challenges of network throughput, fragmentation between Layer 2 solutions, and the emerging threat of quantum computing. By restructuring its technical teams under these three specialized tracks, the Foundation aims to accelerate the delivery of critical features while ensuring that Ethereum remains the most secure and decentralized foundation for global digital activity. The next major milestone on this path is the Glamsterdam upgrade, targeted for the first half of 2026, which will introduce parallel execution and the first phase of enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation to the mainnet.
At the heart of the “Scale” track is an ambitious target to increase the Ethereum mainnet gas limit toward and beyond the 100 million mark. This track, led by researchers Ansgar Dietrichs and Marius van der Wijden, merges the previously separate efforts of Layer 1 execution scaling and blob data availability. To support this massive increase in computational capacity, the Foundation is prioritizing the implementation of block-level access lists (EIP-7928) and the refinement of a zkEVM-based attester client. These tools are intended to reduce the hardware burden on individual nodes, allowing the network to process more data without sacrificing decentralization. Furthermore, the roadmap includes plans to further adjust blob parameters to provide even cheaper data availability for rollups, aiming to bring Ethereum’s total throughput to a level where it can support tens of thousands of transactions per second across its entire ecosystem. This technical progression is viewed as essential for maintaining Ethereum’s dominance as the primary settlement layer for the tokenized economy and high-frequency “agentic” AI applications.
The newly established “Harden the L1” track marks a significant shift in Ethereum’s security philosophy, moving beyond immediate protocol fixes to address long-term systemic risks. This track, overseen by Fredrik Svantes and Thomas Thiery, focuses on three core pillars: post-quantum readiness, censorship resistance, and network resilience. With quantum computing capabilities advancing rapidly, the Foundation is prioritizing research into quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms and native account abstraction, which provides a pathway to replace outdated ECDSA-based authentication. Additionally, the track is advancing the Forward-Ordering Censorship-Inherent List (FOCIL) to protect the network from transaction-level censorship at the block-production stage. By investing heavily in devnets, testnets, and client interoperability testing, the Foundation is ensuring that the “Hegotá” upgrade, planned for late 2026, can safely deploy these advanced security features. This focus on “hardening” ensures that as Ethereum scales to serve millions of users, it retains the fundamental properties of neutrality and resilience that make it a uniquely valuable global infrastructure.
