In brief

• Ethereum has completed five major upgrades since switching to proof-of-stake in 2022.
• Dencun reduced layer-2 fees, while Pectra and Fusaka expanded scaling and staking.
• Glamsterdam and Hegota are the next major upgrades expected in 2026.

Like all blockchainprojects, Ethereumis under active development, with upgrades designed to make it faster, cheaper, and easier to use.

Instead of a single “Ethereum 2.0” event, the network upgrades through coordinated changes called hard forks that introduce new features or modify how the protocol operates.

Since the Merge in September 2022, developers have focused on scaling, lowering transaction costs, improving wallets, and making it easier to run nodes and validators. The Ethereum community is also aiming for roughly two major upgrades per year when research and testing are ready.

Ethereum’s rollup-focused scaling strategy

Ethereum’s scaling plan relies on layer-2 networks. These are separate blockchains built on top of Ethereum that process transactions off-chain and send results back to Ethereum for security and settlement.

Many layer-2 systems use rollups, which bundle multiple transactions together and post them to Ethereum as a single batch, allowing Ethereum to support more activity without the base chain processing every transaction.

As a result, much of Ethereum’s development now focuses on making it cheaper and easier for rollups to use the network.

The six phases of the Ethereum roadmap

In July 2022, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin described the network’s six roadmap phases as the Merge, the Surge, the Scourge, the Verge, the Purge, and the Splurge.

These phases are not single upgrades but broad goals, and several progress in parallel.

• The Merge: Completed. Ethereum moved from mining to staking, cutting energy use by roughly 99.95%.
• The Surge: Ongoing. Focused on scaling Ethereum so rollups can process more transactions at lower cost.
• The Scourge: Ongoing. Focused on reducing the influence of intermediaries in block production and addressing maximal extractable value (MEV).
• The Verge: Ongoing. Aims to introduce Verkle Trees and related changes to reduce resource requirements for verifying Ethereum’s state.
• The Purge: Ongoing. Focused on pruning old data and simplifying the protocol to make Ethereum easier to maintain.
• The Splurge: A collection of smaller improvements and long-term upgrades that enhance usability and efficiency.

Timeline of Ethereum upgrades

Ethereum’s roadmap is implemented through a series of hard forks.

Completed upgrades

• September 2022 — The Merge: Ethereum transitioned from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, reducing energy use by about 99.95%. Validators now lock up ETH to secure the network. The upgrade changed Ethereum’s security mechanism but did not directly lower fees or increase transaction speed.
• April 2023 — Shanghai/Shapella: Shapella enabled validator withdrawals. Early validators had locked ETH for years without a withdrawal option. The upgrade introduced partial withdrawals and full exits.
• March 2024 — Dencun:Dencun introduced proto-danksharding (EIP-4844). It added temporary “blob” storage, creating cheaper space for rollup data so it no longer competes with normal transactions for block space. This significantly reduced costs for many layer-2 networks.
• May 2025 — Pectra:Pectra combined the “Prague” (execution) and “Electra” (consensus) upgrades. Wallet changes such as EIP-7702 allow standard wallets to behave like smart accounts in some cases, enabling features like batching actions into one transaction or delegating gas payment. The upgrade also raised the maximum effective stake per validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, letting large operators consolidate into fewer validators, which some fear could increase concentration. Pectra also increased Ethereum’s capacity to handle rollup data.
• December 2025 — Fusaka: Ethereum’s Fusaka hard fork (short for Fulu-Osaka) activated on mainnet in early December 2025 and focused on data availability, including Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), which lets validators verify small samples of rollup data instead of downloading all of it. This supports more rollup data per block without requiring much more powerful hardware and is paired with higher data capacity at the protocol level.

Planned and upcoming upgrades

• First half of 2026 — Glamsterdam(targeted):Core developers are targeting a mid-2026 upgrade called Glamsterdam as part of Ethereum’s roughly twice-yearly fork cycle, though timing could change. The upgrade focuses on scaling the base layer by enabling more parallel transaction execution through block-level access lists and by integrating proposer-builder separation (ePBS) directly into the protocol to improve block building and throughput. The upgrade is also expected to adjust the cost of state storage to reflect hardware demands better and reduce long-term database growth. Additional proposals include validator rule changes, lower ETH transfer fees, improved transaction logging, and deterministic contract addresses across chains. Node operators and stakers will need to update their clients to support the fork.
• Second half of 2026 — Hegota: The Hegota upgrade is slated for the second half of 2026, though the final scope is still being defined. A key goal is adopting Verkle Trees, which allow nodes to verify blockchain data with much smaller proofs and reduce state storage requirements. This would move Ethereum closer to a more stateless design, lowering hardware demands and making it easier to run a node. Developers are also working on upgrades such as Fork-choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), aimed at strengthening censorship resistance, and smart-account–focused changes (including frame-style transactions) that would enable features like gas sponsorship and social recovery once the underlying proposals are finalized.

Upgrade names and scopes can change during development as proposals are refined before each hard fork.

What Ethereum’s upgrades aim to achieve

Ethereum’s roadmap continues to evolve as research progresses and upgrades are tested on devnets and testnets before mainnet deployment.

This guide will be updated as new milestones are confirmed.

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Source: https://decrypt.co/resources/whats-on-ethereum-roadmap-glamsterdam-hegota-beyond

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