Ethereum’s 2026 Protocol Roadmap: What’s Actually Changing

Ethereum’s base layer is going through more change in 2026 than at almost any point since the Merge, and it’s easy to lose track of which upgrade does what. This is a quick map of the Ethereum protocol roadmap as it actually stands right now, based on what’s shipped, what’s in testing, and what’s still a proposal.

Glamsterdam: The Next Step on Ethereum’s Protocol Roadmap

The nearest-term item on the Ethereum protocol roadmap is Glamsterdam, which splits the flat 21,000-gas assumption that’s applied to every ETH transfer for over a decade into two tiers — one for transfers to existing accounts, one for transfers that create a new account. The Ethereum Foundation has already warned that wallets and gas estimators that hardcode the old assumption will break. Read more: Ethereum’s Glamsterdam Upgrade Rewrites a Decade-Old Gas Rule.

Hegotá: An Encrypted Mempool

Further out on the Ethereum protocol roadmap sits the 2027 “Hegotá” upgrade, which may bundle in EIP-8184 (LUCID) — a proposal to encrypt transactions in the mempool until block builders have already committed to including them, closing off the sandwich attacks that currently cost traders real money. Read more: Ethereum’s New Encryption Plan Could Finally Stop Trading Bots From Front-Running You.

Rollups Riding on the Same Base Layer

Every change to the Ethereum protocol roadmap ripples out to the rollups built on top of it. Gnosis Chain’s vote to become a ZK-proven rollup inside Ethereum’s new “Economic Zone” design is only possible because Ethereum’s base layer keeps evolving toward supporting exactly this kind of synchronous composability. Read more: Gnosis Chain Votes to Become Ethereum’s First ZK Economic Zone Rollup.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

Protocol upgrades aren’t the only thing maturing this year. Decred and BitBox both shipped patches that closed serious flaws before either was exploited, and Solana pulled off a real-world stress test of a regulated, tokenized bond fund — three reminders that blockchain infrastructure is hardening on multiple fronts at once, not just at the Ethereum protocol layer. Read more: Decred’s CoinShuffle++ patch, BitBox’s firmware patch, and Solana’s tokenized fund pilot.