On February 18, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) released the "Protocol Priorities Update for 2026." Compared to past fragmented updates centered around EIPs, this roadmap resembles a strategic schedule, clarifying the upgrade rhythm, priority allocation, and the three main lines—Scale, Improve UX, Harden the L1—that the protocol layer will focus on over the next year.

Behind this, from the successful delivery of two hard forks in 2025 (Pectra/Fusaka) to the early planning of the dual main lines Glamsterdam and Hegotá in 2026, we see Ethereum's development undergoing a profound shift towards "predictable engineering delivery," which may be the most important protocol layer signal in recent years.

1. Ethereum in 2025: Turbulence and Institutionalization in Parallel

If you have been following Ethereum, you will know that 2025 was a year full of contradictions for this protocol. The ETH price may linger at a low point, but the protocol layer experienced an unprecedented wave of reforms.

Especially in early 2025, Ethereum went through a rather tumultuous period, during which the EF found itself at the center of a public outcry—criticism from the community intensified, and there were calls to introduce a so-called "wartime CEO" to drive change, resulting in a series of internal power struggles that led to the most significant power restructuring since EF's establishment:

• In February, Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi was promoted to President, and Vitalik Buterin committed to restructuring the leadership;
• Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz K. Stańczak were appointed as Co-Executive Directors;
• A new marketing narrative organization, Etherealize, led by former researcher Danny Ryan, was established;
• EF further reorganized its board and clarified its values based on cypherpunk principles;
• By mid-year, the foundation restructured its research and development department, consolidated teams, and made personnel adjustments to ensure a focus on core protocol priorities;

It turned out that this combination of moves indeed strengthened Ethereum's execution capacity. Notably, just seven months after the May Pectra upgrade, the successful implementation of the year-end Fusaka upgrade proved that EF, despite undergoing significant leadership changes, could still drive major updates, marking Ethereum's formal transition into a "twice-a-year hard fork" accelerated development rhythm.

After all, since the network transitioned to PoS with The Merge in September 2022, Ethereum had generally been targeting only one major upgrade a year, such as the Shapella upgrade in April 2023 and the Dencun upgrade in March 2024: the former opened staking withdrawals, completing a crucial part of the PoS transformation, while the latter launched EIP-4844, officially opening the Blob data channel, significantly reducing L2 costs.

In 2025, the completion of the two significant hard forks, Pectra and Fusaka, was more critical as it was the first time a systematic planning of named upgrades for the next two years—Glamsterdam and Hegotá—was made.

While there was no formal written requirement, 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 annually, and now they plan to accelerate the hard fork launch rhythm to once every six months, explicitly stating that Fusaka initiated Ethereum's cycle of two upgrades per year.

It can be said that this "institutional" change regarding the upgrade rhythm is quite milestone. The reason is simple: the previous release rhythm was largely dependent on R&D readiness, making the expectation window unstable for developers and infrastructure. Familiar friends should know that delays are not uncommon.

This also means that the successful delivery of two major upgrades in 2025 validated the feasibility of "upgrading every six months." In 2026, the first systematic planning of two named upgrades (Glamsterdam and Hegotá) was established, with priority arrangements surrounding these two nodes along three development tracks, marking a further institutionalization.

Theoretically, this is somewhat similar to the release rhythm of iOS or Android systems, aimed at reducing uncertainty for developers, potentially bringing three positive effects: enhanced predictability for L2, as Rollup can plan parameter adjustments and protocol adaptations in advance; clarity in compatibility windows for wallets and infrastructure, allowing product teams to plan integrations and feature launches in rhythm; and stable risk assessment periods for institutions, meaning upgrades are no longer unexpected events, but rather normal engineering practice.

This structured rhythm is essentially a manifestation of engineering management, also highlighting Ethereum's transition from scientific exploration to engineering delivery.

2. The "Three Legs" of Protocol Development in 2026

Looking closely at the 2026 protocol priority update planning, it can be found that EF no longer simply lists scattered EIPs but has restructured protocol development into three strategic directions: Scale (expansion), Improve UX (enhance user experience), and Harden the L1 (strengthen L1).

Firstly, Scale merges the previous "Scale L1" and "Scale blobs," as EF realizes that the expansion of the L1 execution layer and the widening of the data availability layer are two sides of the same coin.

Therefore, the most eye-catching technology in the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade in the first half of the year is "Block-level Access Lists," aimed at fundamentally altering the current transaction execution model in Ethereum—understood as transitioning from sequential processing of a "single lane" to parallel processing of a "multi-lane":

Block producers will pre-calculate and label which transactions can run simultaneously without conflict, and clients will then be able to allocate transactions across multiple CPU cores for parallel processing, greatly enhancing efficiency. Meanwhile, ePBS (embedded proposer-builder separation) will also be included in the upgrade, embedding the MEV-Boost processes that currently rely on external relays into the protocol itself, which not only reduces centralization risks but also allows more ample time for validators to verify ZK proofs.

Along with these underlying optimizations, the competition for gas limits will enter a fever pitch in 2026. Currently, EF has set the clear goal of "reaching 100 million or more," while the radicals even predict that after ePBS, the gas limit could double to 200 million or more. For L2, the increase in the number of blobs is also crucial; the number of data blocks per block is expected to increase to over 72, supporting L2 networks to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second.

Secondly, Improve UX aims to eliminate cross-chain barriers and promote cross-chain interoperability and native account abstraction. As mentioned earlier, EF believes that solving the fragmentation of L2 is key to making Ethereum "feel like a single chain" again, a vision that relies on the maturity of intent architecture.

For example, the Open Intents Framework, launched in collaboration with multiple teams by EF, is becoming a universal standard. It allows users to transfer assets between L2s by simply declaring the "desired outcome," while the solving network behind it handles the complex path calculations (see further reading "When "Intent" Becomes Standard: How OIF Ends Cross-Chain Fragmentation and Returns Web3 to User Intuition?"); the further Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) aims to build a trustless transfer layer, targeting cross-L2 transactions to have an experience similar to single-chain transactions (see further reading "Ethereum Interop Roadmap: How to Unlock the 'Last Mile' of Large-Scale Adoption").

On the wallet level, native account abstraction will still be this year's key focus. After making the first step with EIP-7702 in the Pectra upgrade of 2025, EF plans to promote proposals like EIP-7701 or EIP-8141 in 2026, with the ultimate goal of making every wallet on Ethereum a smart contract wallet by default, thoroughly abolishing the complex EOA wallets and additional gas payment intermediaries.

Additionally, the implementation of rapid confirmation rules for L1 will significantly shorten confirmation times from the current 13-19 minutes to 15-30 seconds, directly benefiting all cross-chain applications reliant on L1 finality, which is significant for cross-chain bridges, stablecoin settlement, and RWA asset trading.

Finally, Harden the L1 aims to target a security line in the trillion-dollar range, which also benefits from the increasing value locked in the Ethereum ecosystem, elevating the security resilience of the L1 layer to a strategic level.

In terms of censorship resistance, FOCIL (Fork-choice Inclusion List, EIP-7805) is becoming a core solution. It empowers multiple validators with the authority to require specific transactions to be included in blocks, ensuring that even if block producers attempt censorship, as long as a portion of the network is honest, user transactions can ultimately be recorded on-chain.

Addressing the long-term threat of quantum computing, EF has established a new post-quantum (PQ) research team earlier this year, with 2026's focus on researching quantum-resistant signature algorithms and beginning to consider how to seamlessly migrate them to Ethereum's mainnet, ensuring that the security of billions of dollars in assets is not threatened by quantum algorithm breaches.

3. An Ethereum that Focuses More on "Collaboration" is Here

Overall, if one word could summarize Ethereum in 2026, it might be "collaboration."

Upgrades are no longer centered around a single explosive innovation but are collaboratively advanced around three main lines: Scale handles throughput and costs; Improve UX handles usability and accessibility; Harden the L1 handles security and neutrality. Together, these three determine whether Ethereum can sustain the on-chain economy for the next decade.

Meanwhile, more noteworthy than the technical roadmap is the strategic shift reflected in this "three-track" structure.

As mentioned earlier, when the successful completion of the Fusaka upgrade at the end of 2025 established the rhythm of two hard forks per year, Ethereum essentially achieved an "institutionalization" leap in its development model, while the priority update released in early 2026 further extends this institutionalization to the planning of technical directions—historically, Ethereum's upgrades have often centered around a "star proposal" (like EIP-1559, The Merge, EIP-4844), but now, upgrades are no longer defined by individual proposals, but rather consist of the collaborative advance of three tracks.

From a more macro perspective, 2026 also marks a critical year for the reconstruction of Ethereum's "value narrative." In recent years, the market's pricing of Ethereum has centered more around "fee growth driven by L2 expansion." As mainnet performance improves and L2 positions transition from "sharding" to "trust spectrum," the core value of Ethereum is being re-anchored on the irreplaceable positioning of "the world's safest settlement layer."

What does this mean? Simply put, Ethereum is transitioning from a platform reliant on "transaction fee revenue" to one that depends on "security premium" as an asset anchor. The profound impact of this shift may gradually manifest in the coming years—when issuers of stablecoins, agencies tokenizing RWA, and sovereign wealth funds choose a settlement layer, they will not select the cheapest network, but the safest one.

Ethereum is undoubtedly evolving from a "technological testing ground" into an "engineering delivery platform," and the institutionalization of Ethereum protocol governance may truly reach maturity in 2026.

And we may indeed be at a wonderful juncture: as the underlying technology becomes more complex (such as parallel executions and PQ algorithms), the user experience becomes simpler; the maturity of account abstraction and the intent framework is pushing Ethereum toward that ideal endpoint—returning Web3 to user intuition.

If this can be realized, Ethereum in 2026 may indeed transform from a blockchain testing ground into a global financial foundation capable of supporting trillions of dollars in assets, where users need not understand the underlying protocols.

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