Ethereum, Solana, Base and Avalanche are all preparing major protocol changes for the second half of 2026, and the industry’s priorities are changing with them. Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey Group, said earlier upgrade cycles were largely about adding features, increasing throughput and boosting capacity. By 2026, the emphasis is moving toward predictable governance, stronger reliability and institution-grade infrastructure that can support broad financial activity on-chain.
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam centers on throughput and base-layer strength
Within Ethereum’s roadmap, Glamsterdam stands out as one of the most important milestones on the calendar. The upgrade is currently being tested on developer networks and is expected to reach mainnet in the second half of 2026. Planned changes include better scalability, a stronger layer-1 foundation and a simpler user experience intended to make the network easier to use.
Sun said the upgrade could raise transaction throughput, expand data capacity and reduce database bloat. The larger aim is to make Ethereum more suitable for stablecoin settlement and real-world asset activity on-chain. Holly Atkinson, chief product and technology officer at 1inch, called Glamsterdam Ethereum’s most significant upgrade since The Merge in September 2022.
One of the most watched elements is ePBS, short for enshrined proposer builder separation. The structure is designed to make the split between block proposers and block builders clearer at the protocol level, bringing more transparency to block creation and reducing concentration in transaction sequencing. RuleSpark founder Pavan Kaur said the approach may help, but it will not fully remove MEV-related problems because some harmful strategies may persist in altered forms.
Solana targets millisecond-level finality with Alpenglow
For Solana, the key upgrade this year is Alpenglow. After receiving strong support in governance votes in September 2025, it remains under development and is scheduled for release in the latter half of 2026 alongside the Agave 4.1 validator client. Under the current design, Alpenglow will replace the existing TowerBFT mechanism with a new voting component called Votor.
The clearest expected impact is a sharp cut in transaction finality time. Solana is aiming to reduce finality from the current average of about 12.8 seconds to between 100 and 150 milliseconds under optimal network conditions. The upgrade also seeks to remove on-chain voting operations, lower network load and improve communication efficiency among validators. Speed remains a core metric, but the upgrade is also tied to making the network more dependable for high-frequency financial use cases.
Base rolls out Beryl after a sequencer outage
Base has deployed its Beryl hard fork after a sequencer outage caused block production to pause for about two hours because of an invalid block. Base co-founder Jesse Pollak said user assets were not affected by the incident, while also calling the downtime unacceptable. He said the network would use the lessons from the event to strengthen its technical foundation.
According to Base documentation, Beryl introduces the B20 native token standard, cuts withdrawal finality from seven days to five days and integrates Reth V2. Base expects those changes to reduce node storage requirements and improve execution efficiency. For a layer-2 network, that kind of update is as much about operational resilience as it is about performance tuning.
Avalanche leans into enterprise chains while Bitcoin debates continue
Avalanche is taking a different route. The focus is less on a single named hard fork and more on broader architectural changes intended to attract enterprise users and improve performance. Sun said the Etna hard fork replaced the legacy subnet model with sovereign Avalanche L1 chains, cutting the setup cost for a private blockchain by more than 99%. He also said Progmat, which he described as representing about 63% of Japan’s security token market, recently moved more than $2 billion in tokenized assets onto a dedicated Avalanche L1 chain.
Bitcoin remains separate from that pattern. Its main issues in 2026 are not fixed upgrade dates but ongoing debates over whether the protocol should become more programmable and how it should respond to quantum computing risks. Proposals including OP_CAT, CTV and the Lightning-focused LNHANCE are still being discussed without an agreed activation path. BIP 360 and related efforts to ease a shift toward quantum-resistant spending methods also remain under discussion, with no clear consensus in place.