Ethereum has completed an important upgrade, with another controversial reform coming next year, which may push it towards becoming a global settlement layer. On December 3, Ethereum completed the Fusaka upgrade, marking a key step towards long-term scalability.
This upgrade continues the technological iterations since the merger in 2022. Based on the Dencun and Pectra versions that reduce Layer2 costs and increase blob capacity, the new system PeerDAS reconstructs the data availability confirmation mechanism, widening the transaction batch release channels for Layer2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism, enabling the verification of large amounts of data without requiring full node downloads.
However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik clearly stated that Fusaka is not the final version of shard technology, but rather the first practical application of data sharding. He pointed out three major core vulnerabilities:
First, L1 still processes transactions sequentially, and throughput has not increased in line with data capacity;
Second, block builders face centralization risks as data volume increases;
Third, a single global memory pool limits network scalability. In the next two years, PeerDAS will be improved to first support L2 scaling, and once ZK-EVM matures, it will further assist in optimizing L1's gas.
The Glamsterdam upgrade, to be implemented in 2026, will become the next focus. If Fusaka is about 'increasing bandwidth', Glamsterdam focuses on 'stabilizing load', with the core being the introduction of a proposer and block builder separation mechanism (ePBS), integrating block building into the protocol itself to reduce reliance on a few external builders.
The accompanying block-level access list requires builders to clarify the network status for block access in advance, laying the foundation for task scheduling optimization and parallelization, both of which together form the decentralized cornerstone of a high-capacity data system.
In the longer-term roadmap, the Verge upgrade will focus on Verkle trees, replacing full state storage with compact proofs to lower hardware thresholds for nodes and avoid skyrocketing operating costs due to data volume surges.
The upcoming Purge upgrade will clean up historical data and repay technical debts, while Splurge will focus on account abstraction, MEV mitigation, and optimizing the user and developer experience.
These upgrades point towards Ethereum's core goal: to become the global settlement layer.
Ethereum co-founder Joseph said, 'The world economy will be built on Ethereum,' based on the fact that the network has been stably operating for nearly ten years, settling over 25 trillion dollars last year, and dominating the stablecoin and tokenized asset space, with ETH becoming a productive asset through staking and DeFi.
While the Fusaka upgrade is not the endpoint, it has already established a crucial technical framework for this goal, and subsequent upgrades will continue to solidify the foundation of its global financial infrastructure, warranting ongoing attention.
