Ethereum has significantly accelerated its technical development roadmap with the activation of the “Fusaka” network upgrade, aiming to enhance scalability and reduce transaction costs across its decentralized ecosystem.
The upgrade, a hard fork, went live on Wednesday around 9:50 PM UTC, initiating a new strategy by the Ethereum Foundation to deliver major network updates twice annually. This move departs from its previous approach of fewer, larger yearly upgrades, allowing for more agile responses to the growing demand for efficient blockchain solutions.
The central feature of Fusaka is PeerDAS, a new architectural design that optimizes how data is handled for Layer 2 scaling networks. PeerDAS introduces a method for network validators to sample only portions of data “blobs” introduced in a 2024 update, rather than downloading entire packages.
This innovation is expected to significantly reduce bandwidth consumption, enabling a substantial increase in data capacity without compromising network security. The change will allow Ethereum-compatible rollups to process more transactions and offer more competitive fees, making Layer 2 solutions more accessible to users.
Fusaka also implements a mechanism to gradually increase blob capacity. The goal is to reach 14 blobs per block, with a maximum of 21, before January 7. This increase could amplify the system’s capacity up to eight times compared to current limits.
A minimum cost for blobs has been introduced. This aims to prevent fees from dropping too low during periods of low network activity, a situation observed after the Dencun update.
Proportional fees will now apply when demand for rollup computation surges. This is intended to stabilize the fee market and the associated burning of Ether (ETH) tokens.
Beyond scalability, the upgrade includes several security and infrastructure enhancements. These include elevating the gas limit per block to mitigate denial-of-service attack risks.
Native support for the secp256r1 elliptic curve has also been added. This facilitates modern authentication methods like passkeys and crypto-enabled devices.
Another improvement comes from the Count Leading Zeros opcode (EIP-7939). It boosts efficiency in zero-knowledge systems and prepares the network for potential quantum computing threats.
Consensys, a development firm closely tied to the Ethereum ecosystem, described Fusaka as a “significant backend boost.” The firm stated it is preparing the network for major scalability improvements since “The Merge” in 2022.
The successful deployment of Fusaka demonstrates the Ethereum Foundation’s capacity to maintain a more consistent update schedule. The next hard fork, “Glamsterdam,” is already planned for 2026.
Following the Fusaka deployment, the market price of Ether (ETH) saw an approximate increase of 4.71%.