Author: Cointelegraph
Compiled by: Lawrence, Mars Finance
Why are Ethereum upgrades important?
Ethereum's upgrades are crucial for scaling, securing, and developing the network while not compromising its decentralized foundation.
Ethereum remains a heavyweight in the smart contract platform space, but staying ahead means continuous innovation. Each upgrade is not just a technical adjustment; it is a high-risk move aimed at cracking the toughest problems in the cryptocurrency space: scalability bottlenecks, soaring gas fees, cumbersome user onboarding processes, and rising centralization.
In the race where competitors are shortening transaction times and optimizing user experience, stagnation is not a good strategy. To maintain a central position in decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the entire Web3 space, Ethereum must continually enhance its execution and consensus engine.
The Ethereum development roadmap—from the upcoming Pectra upgrade to Fusaka and the Glamsterdam Ethereum update—is not just a technical checklist. It is a balancing act: expanding to meet global demand while continuously scaling to uphold the decentralized ideals it is built upon. In many ways, these upgrades are more than just upgrades; they are the ultimate stress tests for Ethereum's future development.
Did you know? Since 2015, Ethereum has completed 16 major upgrades—from the historic shift to Proof of Stake (PoS) in the 2022 merge to the early sharding steps of Altair in 2021.
Vitalik Buterin's new focus on Ethereum
Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum vision has fully shifted to long-term research, opening new frontiers in scalability, privacy, and decentralization.
In 2024, a major leadership change in the Ethereum Foundation marks a new chapter. Vitalik Buterin stepped back from day-to-day operations to return to his core expertise: planning Ethereum's future. Free from management burdens, Buterin began to delve into some tough issues: scaling Ethereum for billions of users, embedding privacy protections at the protocol level, and maintaining decentralization in an increasingly centralized world.
Buterin's main areas of research include:
Ethereum scalability roadmap: Exploring new execution models to make Ethereum faster and cheaper while not sacrificing security.
Privacy enhancement: Developing native features like stealth addresses and private transactions to protect users by default.
Redesigning consensus and execution: Rethinking how nodes verify and process transactions in preparation for a super-scalable, decentralized Ethereum.
Buterin outlines a vision for an ecosystem that remains open, trustless, and adaptable to a larger, more complex global landscape.
Did you know? Vitalik first proposed Ethereum in 2013 when he was only 19 years old because he felt Bitcoin needed a more programmable architecture.
From the merge to squander: Ethereum's six-phase vision
Ethereum's evolution is divided into six conceptual phases—each addressing different foundational challenges in blockchain design.
Merge: Replacing Proof of Work (PoW) with Proof of Stake (PoS) to lay the foundation for long-term sustainability and validator-based security.
Surge: Focusing on scaling the network through techniques like rollups, data availability (such as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844), and PeerDAS (peer data availability sampling), aiming for 100,000 transactions per second.
Disaster: Aiming to eliminate miners/maximal extractable value (MEV) and achieve stake decentralization, exploring tools like inclusion lists and sacred proposer-builder separation (ePBS).
The Verge: Introducing Verkle Trees and SNARK-based light clients to make Ethereum state access more efficient and enable stateless block verification.
Clear: Simplifying the protocol by trimming historical data (through EIP-4444), eliminating technical debt and reducing node hardware requirements.
Squander: Covering everything else, from Ethereum Object Format (EOF) to deep encryption experiments, refining Ethereum's architecture through long-term improvements.
Ethereum Pectra upgrade description
The Ethereum Pectra upgrade is expected to take place in May 2025, merging the previous two upgrade tracks and laying the technical foundation for Ethereum's next decade.
Pectra merges two parallel upgrade tracks: Prague (execution layer) and Electra (consensus layer), integrating over a dozen Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) into a milestone version. It lays the groundwork for Ethereum's next stage—safer smart contracts, more powerful wallets, and a smoother staking experience.
Key EIPs and features:
EIP-2537: BLS12-381 precompiled — crucial for zero-knowledge rollups and cryptographic proofs.
EIP-7002: Triggered exit — allowing validators to exit through execution layer triggers.
EIP-7702: Account abstraction — making externally owned accounts (EOA) behave more like smart contracts.
EIP-7840: Blob scheduling — preparing for improved data throughput and rollup scalability.
EIP-6110, EIP-7685, EIP-7549, etc.: Further execution and improvements to consensus.
These changes collectively introduced the EOF, a modular contract structure that simplifies auditing and brings native account abstraction closer to reality, enabling smart accounts, gasless transactions, and a better user experience for mainstream adoption.
The official release date for Pectra Ethereum is set for May 2025, but the date may be adjusted based on the final testnet results.
Did you know? During peak times, Ethereum can handle over a million transactions a day—future upgrades aim to further enhance this capacity.
What happens after Pectra: Fusaka and Glamsterdam
Fusaka and Glamsterdam represent the next phase of the Ethereum development roadmap, bringing the scalability and efficiency improvements needed for mass adoption.
Following Pectra, the Ethereum 2025 roadmap continues with two ambitious upgrades:
Fusaka (Osaka-Fulu): Launching PeerDAS, a groundbreaking technology that will enable Ethereum to handle massive amounts of data without bloating the blockchain. By sampling small chunks of data instead of downloading full blocks, Fusaka will allow for lighter nodes and higher transaction throughput.
Glamsterdam (Amsterdam – G-Star): The Glamsterdam Ethereum update is still in the early design phase, focusing on gas optimization and protocol-level efficiency improvements. Its core goal is to improve Ethereum's speed and cost, especially for complex applications like Layer-2 rollups and zero-knowledge (ZK) technology.
Fusaka directly addresses scaling issues, while Glamsterdam ensures the network can operate efficiently under high load without compromising decentralization. Together, they mark Ethereum's transition from early Layer-2 scaling experiments to a mature, high-throughput, global settlement layer.
Buterin's research direction goes beyond the upgrade roadmap.
Buterin's vision for the future of cryptocurrency pushes Ethereum into experimental territory, exploring new architectures for execution, consensus, and privacy.
Beyond the immediate upgrade timeline, Vitalik's research is also addressing larger structural issues:
Post-EVM architecture: Considering adopting modular virtual machines like RISC-V to replace or evolve the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) for improved performance and flexibility.
Decentralized scaling: Deepening the future of Ethereum Layer 2 through rollup-centric scaling and advances in light client validation.
2025 cryptocurrency future plan: Exploring the balance between innovation and decentralization in an environment of increasing regulatory pressure and technological complexity.
These research threads may shape the next generation of upgrades for Ethereum beyond Glamsterdam—redefining what decentralized smart contract platforms will look like before 2030.
Did you know? Buterin's latest research explores RISC-V (an open hardware standard), which is expected to become a future alternative to the EVM, making Ethereum more modular and globally verifiable.
The next phase of Ethereum: Achieving global expansion while defending decentralization.
The next phase of Ethereum is to maintain decentralization while expanding global usage, a balance that few other chains achieve.
The Ethereum consensus upgrade through Pectra, Fusaka, and Glamsterdam is crucial for the following reasons:
Global availability: Lower fees and faster confirmation times are essential for Ethereum to serve millions of users in DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and emerging industries.
Layer 2 synergies: A more scalable Layer 1 makes Layer 2 rollups cheaper, faster, and more secure, driving the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Long-term resilience: Upgrading the execution layer, consensus, and privacy protections now ensures Ethereum can withstand centralization pressures in the future.
Ultimately, the Ethereum scalability roadmap is not just about bigger numbers—it is about protecting what makes Ethereum distinct from centralized alternatives.
So, what should you pay attention to?
Buterin's vision for Ethereum points to a future with radical flexibility, deeper privacy, and unstoppable decentralization.
As the Pectra Ethereum release date (scheduled for May 7) approaches, and with the upcoming Glamsterdam Ethereum update, Ethereum's innovation engine is running at full speed. With Buterin's vision for the future of cryptocurrency gradually taking shape, the Ethereum blockchain is not only prepared to survive the next wave of competition but is also ready to thrive.
The journey from the merge to complete modular, massively scalable networks has just begun.
