What’s on the Ethereum Roadmap: Glamsterdam, Higota and Beyond

Like everyone blockchain projects, Ethereum It is under active development, with upgrades designed to make it faster, cheaper and easier to use.

Instead of a single “Ethereum 2.0” event, the network is upgraded through coordinated changes called Solid forks That introduce new features or modify how the protocol works.

since to merge In September 2022, developers focused on scaling, reducing transaction costs, improving wallets, and making it easier to operate nodes and validators. The Ethereum community also aims to perform approximately two major upgrades per year when research and testing are ready.

Scaling strategy focused on accumulation in Ethereum

Ethereum’s expansion plan is based on Layer-2 networks. These are separate blockchains built on top of Ethereum that process transactions off-chain and send the results back to Ethereum for security and settlement.

Many Layer 2 systems are used groupswhich bundles multiple transactions together and posts them to Ethereum as a batch, allowing Ethereum to support more activity without the underlying chain processing each transaction.

As a result, much of Ethereum’s development is now focused on making the network cheaper and easier for pools to use.

The six stages of the Ethereum roadmap

In July 2022, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin described The six network roadmap stages such as consolidation, surge, affliction, edge, purge, and splurge.

These stages are not individual promotions but broad objectives, and many progress in parallel.

• Merge: complete. Ethereum moved from mining to staking, reducing energy usage by approximately 99.95%.
• Boom: continuous. Focus on scaling Ethereum so that pools can process more transactions at a lower cost.
• Pest: continuous. Focus on reducing the influence of intermediaries in block production and processing Maximum extractable value (MEV).
• Edge: continuous. It aims to introduce Verkle Trees and related changes to reduce the resource requirements for verifying the state of Ethereum.
• Disinfection: continuous. Focus on pruning legacy data and simplifying the protocol to make Ethereum easier to maintain.
• Boasting: A collection of small improvements and long-term upgrades that improve ease of use and efficiency.

Ethereum upgrades schedule

Ethereum Road map It is implemented through a series of hard forks.

Completed upgrades

• September 2022 — Merger: Ethereum was transferred from Proof of work to Proof of stakeWhich reduces energy use by about 99.95%. Validators are now locking ETH to secure the network. The upgrade changed Ethereum’s security mechanism but did not directly reduce fees or increase transaction speed.
• April 2023 – Shanghai/Shabella: Shabelle Enable audited withdrawals. Early validators locked up ETH for years without a withdrawal option. The upgrade provided partial withdrawals and full exits.
• March 2024 — Dincon: Dencun introduced the raw data partitioning technology (EIP-4844). It added “blob” caching, creating cheaper space for the bulk data so that it no longer competes with regular transactions for block space. This has dramatically reduced costs for many Layer 2 networks.
• May 2025 — Bactra: Pectra combined the “Prague” (execution) and “Electra” (consensus) upgrades. Wallet changes like EIP-7702 allow standard wallets to behave like smart accounts in some cases, enabling features such as bundling actions into a single transaction or authorizing gas payments. The upgrade also raised the maximum effective stake per validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH, allowing larger operators to consolidate into fewer validators, which some fear could increase concentration. Pectra also increased Ethereum’s ability to handle aggregated data.
• December 2025 — face: Ethereum’s Fusaka hard fork (short for Fulu-Osaka) was activated on the mainnet in early December 2025 and focused on data availability, including peer data availability sampling (PeerDAS), which allows validators to check small samples of collected data rather than downloading it all. This supports more data collected per block without the need for more powerful hardware and is coupled with higher data capacity at the protocol level.

Planned and upcoming upgrades

• First half of 2026 — Glamsterdam (Targeted): Core developers are targeting a mid-2026 upgrade called Glamsterdam as part of Ethereum’s roughly twice-yearly fork cycle, though the timing may change. The upgrade focuses on scaling the base layer by enabling more parallel transaction execution through block-level access lists and by incorporating bidder-builder separation (ePBS) directly into the protocol to improve block building and throughput. The upgrade is also expected to adjust the cost of state storage to better reflect hardware requirements and reduce database growth in the long term. Additional proposals include changes to validator rules, lower ETH transfer fees, improved transaction logging, and deterministic cross-chain contract addresses. Node operators and stakeholders will need to update their clients to support the fork.
• Second half of 2026 — Higotha: Hegota’s upgrade is scheduled for the second half of 2026, although the final scope is still being determined. The main goal is adoption Tree dressingwhich allows nodes to verify blockchain data using much smaller proofs and reduces state storage requirements. This would bring Ethereum closer to a stateless design, reducing hardware requirements and making node operation easier. The developers are also working on upgrades like forced inclusion menus for Fork-choice (Fossil), with the goal of enhancing censorship resistance, and changes focused on smart accounts (including framework-style transactions) that would enable features such as gas care and social recovery once the core proposals are finalized.

Promotion names and scopes can change during development as proposals are refined prior to each hard fork.

What Ethereum upgrades are intended to achieve

Ethereum’s roadmap continues to evolve as research progresses and upgrades are tested on developer networks and testnets before mainnet deployment.

This guide will be updated as new landmarks are confirmed.