2026 will be a pivotal year for Ethereum's development. The Glamsterdam fork, expected to launch mid-year, will introduce several upgrades, including Perfect Parallel Processing and increasing the block gas limit to 200 million. These changes are anticipated to improve Layer 1 performance and lay the foundation for achieving higher transactions per second (TPS) in the future.
Meanwhile, Layer 2 solutions continue to advance in terms of technology updates and user experience. ZKsync upgrades allow funds to remain on the mainnet while enabling fast transactions on subnets. Furthermore, the Ethereum Foundation and the development community are planning the Heze-Bogota fork at the end of the year, focusing on strengthening the network's censorship resistance.
The Glamsterdam fork will incorporate core changes such as parallel processing and ePBS.
Glamsterdam is a hard fork of Ethereum planned for mid-2026, and developers are currently discussing which Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to include in the release. Confirmed core changes include:
Block Access Lists (EIP-7928)
Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS)
Although these technical names are quite technical, the processing methods and architectural adjustments they represent have a potential impact on the scalability and execution efficiency of the Ethereum mainnet.
EIP-7928: Enhancing Transaction Concurrency Processing Capabilities
Currently, most transactions on the Ethereum mainnet are executed sequentially in a single-threaded manner, limiting overall processing capacity. The block access list proposed in EIP-7928 allows nodes to distribute transactions across different CPU cores for parallel processing based on predefined transaction impact ranges, improving efficiency and reducing conflicts.
According to Consensys engineer Gabriel Trintinalia, this improvement also reduces the system's need to frequently read disks, further reducing latency.
ePBS: Improves block building process and supports ZK proof verification
Ethereum currently uses MEV Boost as a transitional solution separating proposers and builders. ePBS integrates this mechanism into the consensus layer, achieving greater security and decentralization through a native approach.
In terms of scalability, ePBS's most significant contribution lies in providing more time for generating and propagating zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, making validators more incentivized to participate in such verification processes. Researcher Ladislaus von Daniels stated that this change helps decouple the ZK verification process from block execution, improving the overall resilience of the network.
According to Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation, after the ePBS goes live, about 10% of validators will switch to validating ZK proofs, which may further drive up the gas limit.
Gas cap increases are expected to be phased in, with ZK technical support delaying implementation.
Currently, the mainnet gas cap is 60 million. According to Gary Schulte of the Besu team, this cap may increase to 100 million in 2026, and further to 200 million after the ePBS goes live. Tomasz Stańczak (Ethereum Foundation) stated that, technically, the gas cap could potentially reach 300 million.
However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin offered a more conservative view. He believes future resource adjustments will be more targeted, including increasing gas costs for certain resource-intensive operations (such as storage and large contract calls) to balance resource utilization and network efficiency.
Layer 2 Technology Advances: ZKsync Atlas Upgrade and Data Blob Expansion
Taking Layer 2 scaling solutions as an example, ZKsync's Atlas upgrade allows funds to remain on the mainnet while enabling fast transactions on the Elastic Network, improving efficiency and user experience.
On the other hand, the number of data blobs that can be included in a block is expected to increase from the current limit to 72 or more per block, enabling L2 to support transaction throughput of hundreds of thousands of TPS. This will be helpful for high-frequency trading applications, on-chain games, and large-scale financial activities.
The Heze-Bogota fork is planned for release at the end of the year to enhance censorship resistance.
In late 2026, Ethereum is expected to launch another fork, codenamed Heze-Bogota. This version is expected to incorporate some proposals delayed from Glamsterdam. Currently, the proposals listed in the "Consideration List" are the Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists (FOCIL).
This mechanism allows multiple validators to express their preferences for including certain transactions, further reducing the risk of centralized proposers excluding transactions. According to Trintinalia, FOCIL helps ensure that transactions are ultimately processed by the network even when some nodes are honest.
Overall, Ethereum's 2026 upgrade will cover improvements in mainnet execution efficiency, validation architecture adjustments, and Layer 2 availability, while also continuing technological explorations in anti-censorship and decentralized design.
Although there is no clear timeline for achieving the 10,000 TPS target, the changes brought about by the Glamsterdam and Heze-Bogota forks will lay the foundation for future scaling and cross-chain operations.
This article, "Ethereum 2026 Upgrade Plan: Glamsterdam Fork Will Drive Scalability and ZK Validation Development," first appeared on ABMedia ABMedia .
