Summary

The 2026 Ethereum protocol roadmap organizes work into three tracks (Scale, Improve UX, Harden the L1) and two hard forks: Glamsterdam (H1 2026) focused on throughput, and Hegotá (H2 2026) focused on privacy, account abstraction, and censorship resistance. The EF’s Strawmap document (Feb 2026) projects 7 hard forks through 2029 with five North Stars: fast L1, gigagas L1, teragas L2, post-quantum L1, and private L1.

Three Protocol Tracks

TrackLeadsFocus
ScaleAnsgar Dietrichs, Marius van der Wijden, Raúl JordanThroughput, gas limits, DA
Improve UXBarnabé Monnot, Matt GarnettAccount abstraction, wallets, fast confirmations
Harden the L1Thomas Thiery (censorship), Fredrik Svantes (security), Parithosh Jayanthi (infrastructure)Censorship resistance, privacy, security, PQ readiness

The Hardness track (2026-03-18) was added explicitly to ensure scaling and UX improvements don’t sacrifice Ethereum’s core properties: open source, censorship resistance, privacy, security, permissionlessness, trust minimization.

Glamsterdam (H1 2026)

Theme: Scale and performance.

Key EIPs:

  • EIP-7732 — ePBS (Execution Payload Separation): builder-proposer separation at the protocol level; relays become optional.
  • EIP-7928 — Block-Level Access Lists (BALs): headliner for parallel transaction execution and I/O prefetching. Builder attaches read/write sets for all transactions; verifiers can execute in parallel.
  • Parallel execution support
  • Higher gas limits (targeting ~60M+ gas, up from current levels)
  • Blob parameter increases (BPO continuation from Fusaka)

BAL mechanics: The block builder executes transactions sequentially, records all state reads/writes, and attaches the BAL to the block. Validators use the BAL to execute transactions in parallel (up to 4 batches for a typical 161-tx block). I/O prefetching eliminates disk reads during execution. BALs are stored for ~2 weeks then prunable; the BAL hash is permanent in the block header.

Hegotá (H2 2026)

Theme: Privacy, account abstraction, censorship resistance.

Key EIPs:

  • EIP-7805 — FOCIL (Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists): validators randomly selected for 17-member inclusion list committee; builders must include their transactions or blocks fail attestation.
  • EIP-8141 — Frame Transactions: native AA with VERIFY/SENDER/DEFAULT/PAY frame model; default account for EOA compatibility.
  • LUCID encrypted mempool: threshold-encrypted transactions in the public mempool, decrypted N+1 slot (or same-slot with economic commitment).
  • PQ readiness groundwork (Falcon/Dilithium signatures, leanMultisig for finality layer).

Strawmap (Feb 2026)

The EF Protocol team’s 7-fork roadmap through 2029. Five North Stars:

North StarDescriptionKey dependency
Fast L1Slot time reduction; sub-second finalityGoldfish/Minimmit consensus
Gigagas L11 gigagas/sec (~10,000 TPS) via zkEVM + real-time provingZK stack maturity
Teragas L21GB/sec (~10M TPS) via full DASPeerDAS → Full DAS
Post-Quantum L1Hash-based signatures throughoutleanMultisig; Falcon aggregation
Private L1Privacy transfers at L1 levelEncrypted mempool; anonymous broadcast

Slot time reduction path: 12s → 8s → 6s → 4s → 3s → 2s. Each reduction increases pressure on non-Western validators (shorter propagation windows). Concurrent zkAttester transition reduces hardware requirements to partially offset this.

Consensus Evolution

Beyond the immediate roadmap:

  • Decoupled consensus (Goldfish + Majorum): dynamically available heartbeat (~256 validators/slot) + trailing finality gadget. Eliminates Gasper’s complexity; enables post-quantum heartbeat without full-validator-set aggregation.
  • Dynamic availability (Luca Zanolini, Mar 2026): the heartbeat layer must be dynamically available (safe and live as long as a majority of currently awake stake is honest). Required because Ethereum has never gone offline even during client bugs.
  • Leaderless BFT (longer term): eliminates the leader/proposer concept entirely; removes PBS motivation at the consensus layer.

CROPS Mandate

The Ethereum Foundation’s mission for 2026 is defined by CROPS:

  • Censorship Resistance
  • Responsibility (open source)
  • Open Source
  • Privacy
  • Security

CROPS is explicitly non-negotiable as performance and UX improvements ship — each improvement must preserve all five properties.

EF Platform Team (Parallel Track)

Separate from protocol R&D, the EF Platform team was announced to work on:

  • Native rollup architecture (L2s directly using L1 execution)
  • L1 as settlement hub; L2 for differentiation
  • Cross-chain composability (EEZ framework with Gnosis/Zisk)
  • Reducing the current tooling/coordination friction between L1 and L2

Geographic Implications

The roadmap has significant geographic infrastructure implications:

  • FOCIL’s censorship resistance depends on 17-member committees being geographically distributed across jurisdictions.
  • PeerDAS (Fusaka, Dec 2025) requires 128 data column subnets distributed globally.
  • Slot time reduction amplifies the GossipSub mesh latency penalty for non-Western validators.
  • ePBS (Glamsterdam) embeds relay functionality in the protocol, potentially reducing relay-location advantages.
  • Europe + North America currently host ~78.7% of validators (Lido Q4/2025 data).

Key Sources

  • Protocol Priorities Update for 2026 (EF, 2026) — three tracks; EIP list per fork
  • A Deeper Look at Priority: Hardness (Fredrik, Thomas, Parithosh, Mar 2026) — CROPS mandate; hardness track scope
  • Ethereum’s Geographic Blind Spot (Four Pillars, Mar 2026) — Strawmap summary; node distribution data; geographic implications