Ethereum has rolled out the Fusaka upgrade, a major step that allows the network to process more transactions while prioritizing security and decentralization.
Fusaka focuses on EIP-7594: PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling). This is a system that allows Ethereum nodes to verify that block data is complete without having to download everything. This increases network capacity while keeping the network secure and decentralized.
Ethereum is the world’s largest smart contract blockchain in decentralized finance (DeFi) with over $73 billion in total value lock (TVL) and processes 1.3 million to 1.8 million transactions per day, according to EtherScan data.
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“This increases the scalability of Ethereum without compromising decentralization, which is the whole point,” Ethereum Foundation App Relations Lead Jason Chaskin explained to The Defiant. “The trade-off is that this path requires nearly a decade of research and engineering. It’s a difficult way to scale blockchain, but it avoids the shortcut of forcing everyone into a data center.”
He added that Fusaka will also increase the Layer 1 (L1) gas limit from 45 million units to 60 million units and introduce R1 signature precompilation, making it cheaper and easier for developers to use passkeys in their Ethereum apps. For Layer 2 (L2) networks, prices are already very low, and Fusaka assures that they will remain the same.
“PeerDAS provides more blob space in rollups, but that space will only grow over time,” Chaskin says. “In terms of speed, L2 is already very fast. For example, Arbitrum is around 250 ms and Base is around 200 ms.”
This upgrade is an important step in Ethereum’s plans to process more transactions and prepare for future improvements. Today, most activity happens in L2, such as Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum, so lowering data costs is key to keeping prices low and supporting more users.
“This is the first step in L2 data scaling. Ethereum will slowly and methodically increase blob capacity once operators and researchers are confident it is safe,” Chaskin said. “The good news is that these increases can happen through blob-only forks, so we don’t have to wait for a huge hard fork every time.”
He emphasized that the main risk is that this is new software being run live for the first time, so roll it out carefully. Still, he added, this is the first time Ethereum fees have been consistently low for an extended period of time.
“It changes what developers can build and what users can expect. Knowing that the price stays below a penny opens up a whole new category of applications,” Chaskin says. “This makes Ethereum the most predictable environment to build on.”
This upgrade comes just weeks after the Ethereum Foundation revealed new details about its upcoming interoperability layer. The interoperability layer is a system that aims to make the network’s growing Layer 2 (L2) ecosystem function like a single, integrated chain.
