Ethereum Fusaka Hard Fork: Next Major Upgrade Slated for Late 2025
Ethereum’s Fusaka hard fork is scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of 2025, marking the next significant network upgrade after the Pectra update. The Fusaka upgrade focuses on improving Ethereum’s scalability, efficiency, and developer experience to better support the growing demand for decentralized applications and Layer 2 solutions.
Key Features of Fusaka
- Gas Limit Increase: Fusaka plans to raise Ethereum’s Layer 1 gas limit from current levels to around 150 million, more than a fourfold increase, allowing more transactions per block and reducing network congestion.
- Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS): This protocol enhancement improves data availability for Layer 2 rollups by enabling nodes to verify parts of data instead of downloading entire datasets, boosting scalability without sacrificing decentralization.
- Ethereum Object Format (EOF): Originally planned for Fusaka, EOF aims to improve smart contract security and efficiency by restructuring how bytecode is stored and executed. However, due to technical uncertainties, EOF has been removed from the Fusaka upgrade for now.
- Other Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs): Fusaka will include around 15 delayed EIPs from previous upgrades, enhancing validator coordination, fork parameter changes, and overall network stability.
Timeline and Outlook
While the exact rollout date is not finalized, Ethereum Foundation officials aim for a Q3 or Q4 2025 launch, though some delays could push the release into 2026 depending on testing outcomes, especially for PeerDAS. Fusaka represents a critical step in Ethereum’s evolution, addressing scalability bottlenecks and preparing the network for future growth amid expanding DeFi, NFTs, and Web3 adoption.
