#Gate广场四月发帖挑战

Ethereum’s core upgrades have entered the ongoing “post-merge” era of continuous evolution. Here are the current key progress and future roadmap:

✅ Completed Core Upgrades

The Merge ( Merge ): Completed in September 2022, the network transitioned from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS), significantly reducing energy consumption.

Shapella ( Shanghai Upgrade ): Completed in April 2023, it activated the withdrawal function for staked ETH, bringing the staking ecosystem into a mature stage.

Dencun ( Cancun Upgrade ): Completed in March 2024, it introduced Blob transactions via EIP-4844, greatly lowering Layer 2 transaction fees.

🚀 Recently Implemented and Ongoing Upgrades

Pectra Upgrade: Activated in May 2025. Its core is the introduction of EIP-7702, which allows external accounts (EOAs) to temporarily take on the role of smart contract wallets, significantly improving the transaction experience. At the same time, it increases the maximum staking limit per single validator from 32 ETH to 2048 ETH.

Fusaka Upgrade: Completed in December 2025. It introduces PeerDAS, a key step toward data sharding, further improving data availability and reducing Layer 2 costs.

🔮 Key Directions for 2026 and Beyond

The focus of the next upgrades will shift from scaling to deeper network architecture reforms.

Glamsterdam Upgrade ( Expected mid-2026 )

The core is the introduction of ePBS, aiming to separate the roles of block builders and proposers to reduce centralization risks from MEV and transaction censorship issues.

Plans include significantly increasing the Gas limit, aiming to push network throughput to new heights.

Hegota Upgrade ( Expected late 2026 )

The core is the introduction of Verkle trees and stateless clients. This will exponentially reduce the amount of data required to run full nodes, with the goal of making it easy for ordinary consumer-grade hardware to run nodes as well—fundamentally strengthening the network’s decentralization and security.

Long-term Security ( Anti-Quantum Computing )

The Ethereum Foundation has launched the “Lean Ethereum” long-term plan, with the goal of deploying post-quantum cryptography algorithms between 2028 and 2032, enabling the network to withstand attacks from quantum computing.

Summary: Ethereum’s development path is very clear. Recent upgrades (Pectra, Fusaka) continuously improve user experience and scalability. Future upgrades (Glamsterdam, Hegota) are dedicated to addressing deeper centralization risks (via ePBS) and state bloat problems (via Verkle trees), laying the foundation for the network’s long-term decentralization and security.