Author: Michael Johnson

Since announcing the Trillion Dollar Security project, we have surveyed the ecosystem to understand which improvements are highest priority to every layer of the Ethereum stack and community. Now it is time to begin the next phase of this initiative: acting on the highest priority issues we face. For this first wave of actions, we will mostly focus on UX issues. Our research showed these to be the most urgent issues facing both individual and institutional users of Ethereum and Ethereum-based applications. During this first wave we will kick off a range of work targeting crucial areas in UX security.…

Following up from Protocol Update 001, we’d like to introduce our approach to blob scaling. The L1 serves as a robust foundation for L2 systems to scale Ethereum, and a necessary component of secure L2 solutions is data availability provided by the L1. Data availability ensures that updates L2s make back to the L1 can be verified by anyone. Blobs are the unit of data availability in the protocol today, so scaling the blob count per block is a key requirement to usher in a wave of L2 adoption for use cases like real-time payments, DeFi, social media, gaming, and…

A few months ago, we announced a renewed focus of Protocol on three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale blobs, Improve UX. Following previous updates on Scale L1 and Scale blobs, this note relates to our “Improve UX” track, and its mission: Seamless, secure and permissionless experience across the Ethereum ecosystem, for individuals and institutions. We see interoperability, and related projects presented in this note, as the highest leverage opportunity within the broader UX domain over the next 6-12 months, in our position as a public, core Ethereum R&D group. The near-term strategy focuses on areas we believe will continue to…

The EF’s Grants Program launched in 2018 and has evolved over time to become the Ecosystem Support Program (ESP), providing grants and support to builders that help the Ethereum ecosystem thrive. Our mission is to enable work that strengthens Ethereum’s foundations and empowers future builders, in domains such as developer tooling, research, community building, infrastructure, and open standards. In 2024 alone, ESP awarded close to $3M in funding to 105 projects and initiatives that came through our open grants program webforms. These grants, which are one part of ESP’s larger portfolio, supported a diverse range of work, such as Commit-Boost…

As previously announced, the Holešky testnet has reached its planned end-of-life date and will be sunset shortly. The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down 2 weeks after the Fusaka upgrade has finalized on Holešky. After this, Holešky will no longer be supported by client, testing or infrastructure teams. Following the launch of the Hoodi testnet in March 2025, infrastructure providers and staking operators have had the opportunity to migrate their testing operations. Background Holešky was launched in 2023 as Ethereum’s largest public testnet, designed specifically for testing staking infrastructure and validator operations at scale. The network…

Starting with the upcoming Fusaka hard fork, EIP-7825 introduces a per-transaction gas limit cap of 2²⁴ (≈ 16.78 million gas). This change is already live on Holesky and Sepolia, and will activate on mainnet with Fusaka. Developers and users who rely on very large transactions should verify that their contracts and transaction builders conform to the new cap. Background As Ethereum scales to higher block gas limits and prepares for parallel execution (e.g. EIP-7928 in Glamsterdam), the Fusaka fork introduces a per-transaction gas limit cap. Previously, a single transaction could consume the entire block gas limit (~45 million gas), creating…

Over the past few years, the Ethereum ecosystem has grown in depth, diversity, and maturity. Builders and communities worldwide have pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, creating new tools, protocols, and public goods that strengthen the network as a whole. As the ecosystem grows, our approach to supporting it must adapt as well. Today, we’re excited to share the next step in that journey: the Ecosystem Support Program’s (ESP) new grants program. This announcement builds on our earlier update, where we temporarily paused open grant applications to reassess our priorities and funding approach. During this time, we focused on designing…

In two weeks, we open the doors to the first-ever Ethereum World’s Fair at La Rural in Buenos Aires. This year isn’t about someday. It’s about now. On Ethereum today you can pay, play, vote, save, borrow, lend, and chat, all onchain — and at Devconnect you’ll experience that shift hands-on, IRL.Buenos Aires is the right backdrop for this moment: a city where crypto is part of daily life and where builders are ready to show what’s live. Below is your guide to what’s inside the fairgrounds, how to plan your week, and what to do before you arrive. Inside…

Fusaka follows this year’s Pectra upgrade, representing a major step forward in Ethereum’s scaling roadmap that improves L1 performance, increases blob throughput, and enhances user experience. The Fusaka network upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum mainnet at slot 13,164,544 (December 3, 2025, 21:49:11 UTC). Fusaka also introduces Blob Parameter Only (BPO) forks to safely scale blob throughput after PeerDAS activation. These are minimal, config-only upgrades that adjust the blob target/max and fee update fraction. See the activation table below for further details. The Fusaka mainnet client releases are listed below. Fusaka Overview Fusaka’s headlining feature is PeerDAS (Peer…

Ethereum’s weekly All Core Developer calls are a lot to keep up with, so this “Checkpoint” series aims for high-level updates roughly every 4-6 weeks, depending on what’s happening in core development. See the previous update here. If you enjoy reading core development updates, you may also be keen to learn that Forkcast now publishes call summaries, chats and transcripts for each All Core Devs call, usually available within a couple hours of the call. tl;dr: The Fusaka upgrade is nearly out the door, Glamsterdam is ramping up, with its major features in implementation and minor features being decided on.…