Ethereum has officially implemented the Fusaka upgrade, which is designed to increase the network’s transaction processing capabilities while maintaining security and decentralization standards, according to network documentation.
ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin took his hat off to the developers behind this effort.
summary
- Ethereum deploys Fusaka upgrade to enhance transaction processing while keeping security and decentralization intact.
- The key innovation is EIP-7594 (PeerDAS), which allows nodes to validate block data without downloading everything, increasing efficiency.
- The upgrade supports scaling and DeFi growth, allowing Ethereum to process millions of transactions every day and maintain a cutting-edge smart contract ecosystem.
“A huge congratulations to Ethereum researchers and core developers who worked hard for years to make this happen,” the 31-year-old entrepreneur told X late Wednesday.
Fusaka’s PeerDAS is important because it is literally sharding.
Ethereum is reaching consensus on blocks without requiring a single node to see more than a small portion of the data. And it is robust against 51% attacks. This is client-side probabilistic validation and is not… pic.twitter.com/OK81xBteER
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) December 3, 2025
Expand network capacity while maintaining existing security
The Fusaka upgrade went live on the network’s last testnet, Hoodi, in October.
This is centered around EIP-7594: PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling). This is a protocol that allows Ethereum nodes to verify the integrity of block data without requiring the full data to be downloaded. This implementation aims to expand network capacity while maintaining existing security and decentralization parameters.
Ethereum, the largest smart contract blockchain by total amount locked, has over $73 billion in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. According to data from Etherscan, a blockchain analytics platform, the network processes between 1.3 million and 1.8 million transactions every day.
The Fusaka upgrade represents part of Ethereum’s ongoing development roadmap focused on scaling solutions, particularly sharding. This method of scaling blockchains significantly increases throughput by dividing the network into smaller parts and allowing nodes to process portions of transactions while maintaining security.
Network developers position this upgrade as a technological advancement in Ethereum’s ability to handle increased transaction volumes without compromising the decentralized nature of the blockchain’s validator network.
“Sharding has been a dream for Ethereum since 2015, and data availability sampling has been possible since 2017,” Buterin wrote, citing a GitHub post. “And now we have it.”
price action
After the upgrade went live, Ethereum broke above $3,000. Last time I checked, it was up about 5%, trading at about $3,162.
read more: Ethereum co-founder Buterin allocates 256 ETH to privacy messaging project
