Ethereum prepares a controversial 2026 overhaul that will forcibly strip power from the network’s most dominant players

Ethereum recently completed the Fusaka upgrade, which introduced PeerDAS to improve data availability for Layer 2 networks, but co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted it is incomplete, lacking increased execution throughput, addressing centralization risks from block builders downloading full data, and eliminating the single global mempool.

The next major step, the Glamsterdam upgrade targeted for 2026, is designed to handle the increased operational load from Fusaka and is considered controversial because its headline feature, enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS), will formalize block construction within the protocol itself. This change aims to strip power from dominant external block builders by formalizing how they bid for blocks, thereby preventing further centralization as data volumes grow.

Glamsterdam also includes block-level access lists to improve scheduling and pave the way for parallelization. Subsequent upgrades like the Verge (focusing on Verkle trees to reduce state storage requirements) and the Purge/Splurge aim to ensure Ethereum remains scalable, secure, and decentralized, positioning it as a global settlement layer capable of handling millions of transactions per second.

(Source：CryptoSlate)