The Ethereum Foundation has published its 2026 roadmap, setting ambitious targets for network throughput, usability, and long-term security. The plan builds on a productive 2025, when the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades doubled blob throughput, raised validator balances, shortened onboarding times, and steadily increased the mainnet gas limit from 30M to 60M. Features such as transaction batching, gas sponsorship, and peer-to-peer data sampling were also introduced.
Gas Limit Heads Toward 100M, Three Tracks in Parallel
The roadmap organizes development into three tracks. The Scale track aims to push the gas limit toward and beyond 100M, advance zero-knowledge proof attester clients, and continue blob scaling. The Improve UX track focuses on native account abstraction, enabling smart contract wallets to operate without relayers, and improving cross-L2 interoperability through the Open Intents Framework. The newly created Harden the L1 track targets long-term resilience: post-quantum cryptography research, execution-layer safeguards, censorship resistance, and robust testing infrastructure. Parallel execution, Proposer-Builder Separation, and state scaling will be implemented in upcoming upgrades.
Two Mainnet Upgrades: Glamsterdam and Hegotá
Ethereum plans two major network upgrades in 2026: Glamsterdam in the first half and Hegotá later. Each will bring higher gas limits, continued blob scaling, enhanced L1 security, native account abstraction, and incremental post-quantum readiness.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also shared his vision for integrating blockchain with AI. He sees Ethereum supporting private AI computation, encrypted API calls, and client-side verification of proofs — forming a trust-minimized foundation for AI applications. The platform could also serve as an economic layer for AI activity, enabling automated coordination between AI agents, smart contract-enabled transactions, and on-chain dispute resolution. Complex governance mechanisms like prediction markets and quadratic voting could scale beyond human limitations when combined with AI.
These efforts reflect Ethereum’s commitment to growing throughput, improving user experience, and hardening the network against emerging threats such as quantum computing.