Ethereum’s scaling transition and the Fusaka upgrade

PeerDAS and the blob capacity push

The Fusaka upgrade, which launched on December 3, 2025, targets data availability bottlenecks through PeerDAS. This mechanism uses statistical sampling and erasure coding to let nodes verify 1/8th of data blobs. Validators currently store between 40 and 100 GB of blob data for 18 days. PeerDAS enables the network to reach 50 to 80 blobs per block. I find the Blob Parameter-Only fork method efficient because it allows developers to increase capacity based on real performance data. Rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base benefit as they batch more transactions per blob. I observe that current usage remains below the 14 blob per block target. Even when usage reaches 45,000 blobs in a day, the system maintains stability. The 16.7 million per-transaction gas cap prevents chain spamming during these high-capacity periods. Will the network scale without losing decentralization?

Staking rewards and the Hegota debate

The community declined the EIP-8363 proposal for the upcoming Hegota upgrade because it would have burned increasing shares of validator rewards until consensus issuance reached zero once staking reached 50%. Since 42.7 million ETH, or 35% of the supply, currently stakes, I see why developers rejected this "monetary self-sabotage." The 2026 EthStaker survey indicates most solo stakers would exit if yields fell below 2%. This reduction in rewards specifically hits solo stakers harder than corporate operators. You should recognize that slashing penalties remain a massive risk for anyone running a node. Pectra, which arrived in May 2025, already raised the maximum effective balance for a single validator from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH via EIP-7251. In mid-June 2026, roughly 39.7 million ETH sat staked across more than 1.2 million active validators. Base issuance APR sat in the 2.6% to 2.8% range during that period. Ethereum’s gross issuance stays around 0.9% annually, which is similar to Bitcoin. For comparison, 2025 gold production added approximately 1.67% to the above-ground stock. P2P.org listed a 5% validator fee against a stated 2.9% net rate in a September 2026 survey. BitMine reported holding 5.90 million ETH as of August 30, 2026, with over 5 million ETH already staked.

Throughput and network economics

Glamsterdam targets the Sepolia testnet for September 28. This upgrade introduces enshrined proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists to improve throughput and parallel execution. Developers pushed the gas limit from 45 million to 60 million during the Fusaka deployment. Research suggests the network could eventually handle 150 million. In Q1 2026, Ethereum processed 200.4 million transactions, a 43% increase over Q4 2025. In January 2026, the network processed 2,885,524 transactions in a single day. Average gas prices hit 0.052 Gwei in April 2026, which allowed for lower costs than previous cycles. Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism now handle more than 60% of total Ethereum transaction volume. Ethereum supports around $148 billion in stablecoins and $48 billion in DeFi TVL as of September 2026. Ethereum trades around $2,400 in mid-to-late 2026. U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs accumulated approximately $13 billion in net inflows as of September 2, 2026. BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust held around $8.45 billion in net assets at the beginning of September. Coinbase estimates its commission on rewards at 25% to 35%. Ethereum processes roughly 2 million transactions per day.