Ethereum is about to cross a decisive milestone in its technical overhaul. As the deployment of Fusaka approaches, the network is entering the final testing phase of a key update. Behind this discreet change lies a strategic turning point: laying the foundations for parallel execution, expected in 2026. More than just a performance gain, Ethereum is initiating a structural transformation designed to sustainably support its scaling amid growing scalability challenges.
The Fusaka update introduces a major new element: the establishment of a gas cap per transaction set at 16.78 million units, in accordance with proposal EIP-7825.
Until now, a single transaction could consume the entire gas available in a block, approximately 45 million units, which exposed the network to congestion risks or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The gas limit per transaction aims to improve block efficiency, reduce DoS risks, and lay the groundwork for parallel execution.
This limit is already active on the Holesky and Sepolia testnets, as part of the preparatory phases for deployment on the main network.
By establishing this limit, Ethereum seeks to improve protocol resilience while smoothing transaction processing. This technical change is also accompanied by an increase in the overall block capacity, from 45 to 60 million gas units.
Specifically, this evolution enables :
This overhaul of the network’s internal operation marks a key milestone in professionalizing the Ethereum infrastructure, in preparation for future evolutions such as parallel execution.
Beyond this new block architecture, Fusaka introduces a central innovation called PeerDAS, standing for “Peer Data Availability Sampling”. This system allows Ethereum nodes to store only a random portion of the “blob” data from layer 2, rather than the entire dataset.
The goal is to reduce hardware requirements while maintaining network security. This advancement aims to strengthen the adoption of rollup-type solutions, which rely precisely on this data availability. Indeed, this PeerDAS innovation “allows for reducing hardware needs while maintaining security, and promotes more economical, high-throughput scalability for layer 2 networks”.
The implementation of PeerDAS paves the way for the next step in the Ethereum roadmap : the “Glamsterdam” update, planned for 2026, which will introduce EIP-7928, the first concrete iteration of parallel transaction execution. This evolution will allow processing multiple operations simultaneously, instead of executing them sequentially as is still the case today.
In this perspective, Fusaka acts as an essential prerequisite: without gas limits per transaction and optimized data infrastructure, parallel execution could not be deployed securely. For Gabriel Trintinalia, engineer at Consensys, “these testnet updates are essential to strengthen confidence before the mainnet fork”.
Ultimately, this series of improvements, scheduled for December 3, could profoundly transform Ethereum’s internal operation. The network is moving towards a more modular, scalable architecture better suited to future uses, especially those of layer 2 solutions. These allow validating performance, identifying edge cases, and refining technical parameters before activation.
