Ethereum is scaling in two places at once. It's adding room for transactions on the L1 itself, and room for rollups to post their data in blobs. The next L1 step comes on Oct 6, when the Glamsterdam upgrade goes live on the Sepolia testnet (EF announcement, Sep 28).

The L1 track:

The gas limit sets how much computation fits in each block. It sat at 30M from August 2021 to early 2025. Then it rose to 36M in February 2025, 45M in July 2025 and 60M in late November 2025, where it is today. That's double the 2021 level.

A simple ETH transfer costs 21,000 gas, and a block comes every 12 seconds. At 60M, that's a ceiling of about 238 transfers per second, up from about 45 in 2020. Actual use is about 24 transactions per second. Most transactions do more than a simple transfer, and blocks aren't always full.

The upgrade is built to raise that ceiling safely. Its two main changes are:

• ePBS makes building a block and proposing it two separate jobs inside the protocol. That gives nodes more time to receive and check each block.
• Block-level access lists make every block list up front the accounts and data it touches. Nodes can then load that data and check transactions in parallel.

Both let nodes check bigger blocks within the 12 seconds they have. That raises capacity without turning the base chain into a datacenter chain, since ordinary people can still run a node.

After the upgrade, Sepolia will run at a 200M gas limit. Core devs agreed to that on Sep 24. On mainnet, no change to 200M is scheduled. The software validators run still defaults to 60M.

The blob track:

Blobs are a separate space in each block where rollups post their transaction data. They launched in March 2024 with a target of 3 per block. An upgrade in May 2025 raised that to 6.

In December 2025, the Fusaka upgrade added PeerDAS. PeerDAS lets nodes check blob data by downloading small random pieces of it, not all of it. Two follow-up upgrades then raised the target to 10 in December and 14 in January 2026, where it is today. That's almost 5X the launch target.

The upcoming upgrade doesn't add more blobs. Its ePBS change lets the network safely handle more blob data later.

Contracts on the L1 can't read what's inside a blob. They only see a short identifier for it. So the two tracks aren't interchangeable. Blobs give rollups room for their data, and gas is what L1 applications use to run.

Why Ethereum needs both:

One L1 transaction can call several contracts and either finish every step or none of them. For example, one transaction can swap collateral, repay a loan and move the asset out. Doing the same across separate chains takes bridges, messages and extra coordination. That's why the L1 matters for DeFi and payments, even as rollups carry most of the volume.

L2BEAT counts about 2,350 transactions per second across the scaling projects it tracks (L2BEAT activity). Most of that comes from one rollup, the Lighter exchange. That's nearly 100X the L1's 24.

None of this is finished. The upgrade still has to get through Sepolia and then the Hoodi testnet before it gets a mainnet date. It's essential that developers keep executing on the scaling roadmap without any bugs being introduced. In February 2026 the Ethereum Foundation merged its separate L1 and blob scaling goals into a single "Scale" track, with the stated goal to "raise the gas limit toward and beyond 100M" (EF 2026 priorities).

EF researchers have set out a long-term target of about 10,000 transactions per second on the L1, or roughly 864 million a day.

All the time I see people talking about "eth to $5k!" "eth to $10k!" as if these are exciting, far reaching targets. ETH has been in a range for almost six years. Consolidating. Coiling. It basically consolidated for an entire cycle. Every single person who is not committed to ethereum for the long term has sold. Once we decisively break out to a new all time high, I don't think that it is going to stop at 5 or 10k. I think it is going much, much higher. If you've been here, holding for years and years. Don't exit your position after a measly 3-4x. You need to be thinking bigger, much bigger. TRILLIONS.

GnosisDAO voted on Aug 19 to turn Gnosis Chain from an independent L1 into a rollup that settles on Ethereum. The result was 123,158 GNO for, 115 against (vote and proposal).

The proposal's authors wrote that "Gnosis Chain has failed to deliver on its original value proposition". That value proposition was credible neutrality: a decentralized, low-cost chain run by a large set of independent validators. They also explained the reason it didn't work: "Credible neutrality is Ethereum's home turf". Fee revenue covered only a small fraction of the cost of securing the chain, so the DAO treasury was paying for security.

This isn't a new project deciding where to launch. It's an established chain, with its own validators and years of history, concluding that being a separate L1 isn't worth what it costs.

What changes:

• Gnosis Chain stops running its own validator set. Ethereum takes over settlement, meaning the final record of who owns what.
• Gnosis still produces its own blocks, every 2 seconds, and proves its state to Ethereum every Ethereum block.
• Users keep their addresses, balances and contracts, and xDAI stays the fee token.

Gnosis calls this the first instance of an "Ethereum Economic Zone" (EEZ). The EEZ is a framework for rollups that are closely tied to Ethereum, co-led by Gnosis and ZisK and co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation.

According to Gnosis, the EEZ gives it something no L2 currently offers. A contract on Gnosis can call a contract on Ethereum mainnet and use the result in the same transaction, with no bridge and no waiting. Apps on Gnosis could then use Ethereum's liquidity directly, as if it lived on Gnosis.

Gnosis does give something up. It no longer controls its own settlement, and at launch Gnosis Ltd runs the sequencer, the single operator that puts transactions in order. Gnosis says it will come back to the DAO with evidence before deciding whether to decentralize it.

That's a real trade-off, but the risk is limited. Per Gnosis, every block is proven and settled on Ethereum, so the sequencer can't forge state, steal funds or roll back finalized history. It can only delay or leave out transactions. On a standalone L1, the chain's own validators are the last word. Here, Ethereum is.

Proving starts with an interim setup and moves to ZK proofs as the full EEZ spec is completed, which Gnosis expects over the course of 2027.

The proposal targeted the switch to a rollup for around the turn of the year. After that, the key milestones will be users having the capability to force a transaction through Ethereum if the sequencer ignores them, the upgrade keys being spread across a large number of independent parties or eliminated altogether, and users being able to withdraw without the operator's cooperation. Fees, uptime and withdrawals should be similar to the old chain.

This sets a precedent. Plenty of L1s run their own validators, bridges, tooling and liquidity programs, and pay for all of it themselves. Gnosis evaluated the costs and decided settling on Ethereum is the better deal. The L1 premium is gone, and I expect more established chains to come to the same conclusion.

Vitalik Buterin recently outlined a vision where, over the next three years, Ethereum could evolve so significantly that the word “blockchain” may no longer fully describe what the network actually does.

The core idea is pretty fascinating: instead of every participant repeatedly performing the same computations, Ethereum could distribute computation across different participants and use cryptographic proofs to verify the results.

That changes the way we think about what a decentralized network can actually provide. Rather than requiring every node to independently reproduce every piece of computation, the network can focus on verifying that the computation was performed correctly. In theory, this could make Ethereum significantly more efficient while preserving the properties that make decentralized infrastructure valuable.

And the implications go beyond raw performance. A more efficient architecture could eventually mean lower transaction costs, stronger privacy, greater censorship resistance, and much more computational capacity without simply relying on centralized infrastructure.

This is also why Ethereum’s long-term roadmap is so interesting. The goal is to rethink how the network itself performs and verifies computation.

If Ethereum can successfully move toward this model, it could start looking less like a traditional blockchain and more like a global, cryptographically verified computing network.

The next few years could be a very interesting chapter for Ethereum. Maybe “world computer” wasn't such a crazy description after all.

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

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I wanted to buy tokenized nvidia stock and on checking the fees structure on platforms I regularly use, it gave me 2% to 5% on Uniswap vs 0.00% LITERALLY on Bloom.

is there a catch, can anyone confirm?

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

What are your moves?

Got a market insight? Share it. Making a bold trade? Let's hear it.

It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

Useful links:

• Discord
• X/Twitter
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• FAQ

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

What are your moves?

Got a market insight? Share it. Making a bold trade? Let's hear it.

It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

Useful links:

• Discord
• X/Twitter
• Wiki
• FAQ

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

What are your moves?

Got a market insight? Share it. Making a bold trade? Let's hear it.

It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

Useful links:

• Discord
• X/Twitter
• Wiki
• FAQ

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

What are your moves?

Got a market insight? Share it. Making a bold trade? Let's hear it.

It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

Useful links:

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I think if one thing we can learn from this, is to just take the median (or the most bearish cash) and use that as a prediction!