Fusaka Ushers In Ethereum’s New Era of Twice-Yearly Upgrades and 8x Scaling Power

04. Dec 2025 Posted by Laurent C. on News

Ethereum’s latest major upgrade, Fusaka, officially went live at the start of epoch 411392 at around 21:50 UTC on Wednesday, marking a transformative moment for the network’s long-term roadmap. More than just another technical milestone, Fusaka signals the beginning of a new Ethereum era — one where major upgrades ship twice per year, dramatically accelerating development across the ecosystem.

As Ethereum’s 17th major upgrade, Fusaka arrives roughly seven months after Pectra. But unlike previous yearly cycles, the Ethereum Foundation is now shifting to a rapid cadence of hard forks, demonstrating that its refreshed leadership can deliver large-scale upgrades at speed.

Since The Merge in 2022, Ethereum traditionally launched one major upgrade annually — Shapella, Dencun, and Pectra. Fusaka breaks that rhythm by delivering the largest batch of EIPs yet: nine core proposals and four supporting improvements, surpassing the scale of Pectra’s rollout.

PeerDAS: The Breakthrough Behind Fusaka’s Scaling Leap

The most anticipated component of Fusaka is PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling), introduced through EIP-7594. After Dencun brought “blobs” to Ethereum in 2024, PeerDAS dramatically improves how Ethereum nodes handle that data.

Instead of downloading full blob data, validators now sample only small segments — a shift that:

  • Increases blob throughput

  • Slashes bandwidth requirements for nodes

  • Allows Layer 2 rollups to pack more transactions

  • Cuts L2 fees while maintaining security

To build on PeerDAS, Ethereum is also rolling out Blob Parameter Only (BPO) updates, pushing blob capacity to new heights. By January 7, the network will scale blob targets to 14 and blob maximums to 21, ultimately enabling an 8x increase in blob space available to L2s.

A new blob base fee floor ensures blobs don’t become artificially cheap during slow periods, while dynamic fees better handle transaction bursts — stabilizing rollup costs and improving ETH’s fee-burn behavior.

Kraken’s Calvin Leyon summarized the impact:
“More blob space, lower costs, and smarter data availability… Ethereum gets more powerful without getting more complicated.”

Beyond Scaling: UX, Security, and “Backend Boosts”

While Fusaka doesn’t include the front-facing UX leaps seen in Pectra, it brings essential structural upgrades:

  • Gas limit cap protections against runaway block gas usage and DoS threats

  • Native secp256r1 elliptic curve support, unlocking device-native signing and passkeys

  • EIP-7939 (Count Leading Zeros Opcode) to enhance zero-knowledge performance and support long-term quantum resistance

These updates aren’t attention-grabbing but harden Ethereum’s core, laying groundwork for future breakthroughs.

Consensys framed Fusaka as a backend-power overhaul — “one of the biggest scaling gains since The Merge.”

What’s Next? Glamsterdam Arrives in 2026

With Fusaka now live, researchers are already shifting focus to Ethereum’s next major release: Glamsterdam, slated for 2026, marking the second milestone in Ethereum’s new twice-a-year upgrade cycle.

The era of rapid Ethereum evolution has begun — and Fusaka is the upgrade that set it in motion.