Foremost highlights
- Within the newest podcast, Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak revealed that builders will deal with: L1 scaling and organizational privateness in 2026
- Beforehand, Vitalik Buterin urged the neighborhood to deal with long-term objectives as a substitute of following the newest developments.
- Two main arduous forks, Gramsterdam in mid-2026 and Hegota in late 2026, are designed to reinforce Ethereum’s capability.
In a current interview on the ETHPanda Discuss Podcast, Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Basis, shared essential particulars about new developments subsequent 12 months in 2026.
Tomasz Stanczak: Ethereum will deal with L1 scaling and organizational privateness in 2026
In an interview with ETHPanda Discuss, Nethermind founder Tomasz Stanczak revealed that whereas researcher Dankrad Feist believes L1 scaling remains to be in its infancy, Ethereum is shifting its focus to sooner… pic.twitter.com/WqHGVOg7QO
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 2, 2026
Stańczak, founding father of main growth staff Nethermind, stated that whereas layer 1 scaling stays an “unfinished” problem, as Ethereum researcher Dankrad Feist identified, the inspiration is now focusing its new 12 months on two key areas, together with sooner transactions and improved privateness options.
These priorities will assist meet the rising calls for of institutional customers who require each confidentiality and safe funds.
Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak's assertion indicators a brand new 12 months technique wherein builders plan to steadiness enterprise-level necessities with scalability. His transfer from bootstrapping Nethermind, the place he has contributed to essential initiatives reminiscent of Flashbots and the Starknet Basis, to a management position on the Ethereum Basis indicators a concerted effort to streamline key developments. It additionally plans to make it appropriate with new applied sciences reminiscent of synthetic intelligence.
This interview began a dialogue within the crypto neighborhood concerning the evolving position of foundations.
Vitalik Buterin urges renewed deal with decentralization and resilience
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has additionally been vocal concerning the essential evolution of the community. In a chat at Devconnect Buenos Aires in late 2025, Buterin shared numerous upcoming Ethereum Enchancment Proposals (EIPs) geared toward safely rising the community's capability whereas sustaining its decentralized nature.
(Supply: Vitalik Buterin of X)
Buterin primarily highlighted proposer-builder separation (PBS) and block-level entry lists (BAL) as main upgrades that may guarantee fuel limits could be raised by the top of 2026 and make the community stronger.
Vitalik Buterin has issued a grave warning as 2026 begins, urging the neighborhood to refocus on Ethereum's unique plan as a censorship-resistant “world pc.” He argued that with out built-in privateness protections, customers may flee to centralized alternate options that higher defend their monetary information.
Buterin additionally launched sensible “walk-away testing” for purposes. This check raises questions on whether or not they are going to proceed to work if the unique developer is gone or if a serious centralized service like Cloudflare fails.
Individually, he raised main issues about quantum computing, warning that present elliptic curve cryptography might be damaged by the 2028 US presidential election. Due to this fact, there’s an pressing must improve quantum efficiency inside 4 years.
In a press release, he urged the neighborhood to deal with key objectives moderately than chasing the newest developments. he stated:Ethereum must do extra to attain the objectives it has set for itself. Whether or not it's tokenized {dollars} or political meme cash, it's not a quest to 'win within the subsequent meta'. ”
“zkEVM has exploded previous efficiency milestones, and with zkEVM and PeerDAS, Ethereum has taken its greatest step in the direction of a basically new and extra highly effective kind of blockchain,” he stated.
Glamsteldam and Hegota arduous fork
In its newest revelation, the Ethereum staff revealed two main arduous forks deliberate for 2026.
The primary one is named ““Gramsteldam” is deliberate for mid-2026. This improve focuses on dramatically bettering general execution. Parallel transaction processing will likely be launched and the layer 1 fuel restrict will likely be considerably elevated from 100 million in the direction of 200 million. With this, validators start to maneuver in the direction of verifying zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.
These adjustments, together with the implementation of EIP-7928 for block entry lists, are anticipated to extend Layer 1 transaction capability towards 10,000 transactions per second (TPS). Growing the variety of information “blobs” per block additional helps layer 2 networks.
The second fork, at the moment known as “Hegota,” is focused for late 2026. This improve is anticipated to develop primary privateness primitives straight into the protocol and enhance censorship resistance by mechanisms reminiscent of FOCIL to ingest transactions extra shortly.
Additionally learn: Ethereum community sees adjustments in staking conduct as entry queues develop bigger than exits
