Ethereum Fusaka Upgrade Goes Live: How L1 & Layer 2 Improvements Are Reshaping the Network

Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade is now live—and it's not just another line in the changelog. This hard fork delivers concrete improvements to both the base layer and the scaling ecosystem built on top of it.

What's Changing at Layer 1?

The core protocol gets a tune-up. Expect tweaks to gas mechanics and state management that streamline on-chain operations. It's about making the foundation more efficient, block by block.

Layer 2 Gets a Boost

Here's where the real user-facing impact kicks in. Fusaka introduces enhancements that help rollups and other L2s process transactions faster and cheaper. The goal? Making those frustrating network congestion fees feel like a bad dream.

The upgrade cuts finality times and bypasses previous bottlenecks, directly tackling the user experience hurdles that have plagued scaling efforts. It's a coordinated push to make the entire stack—from L1 to L2—feel seamless.

For developers, it means fewer workarounds. For users, it should mean lower costs and less waiting. Of course, in crypto, every efficiency gain is quickly priced in by the market—often before most users even notice the difference.

Ethereum Fusaka Upgrade Brings Key Performance Boosts

• The Fusaka upgrade was completed on December 3, 2025, and had 13 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that intend to enhance Layer 1 performance and optimize data availability to rollups. 

• The upgrade increases the size of blobs by eight times, enabling cheaper and more efficient storage of off-chain data, which is crucial in Layer 2 scaling solutions.

• The Fusaka upgrade is a landmark event in the L1+rollup roadmap of Ethereum that will enable sub-second finality of transactions and higher throughput on the network. 

• The Layer 2 rollups can now cut down on transaction costs by up to 90% of what they were before Dencun.

Source: ethpandaops X

Blob Parameter Only Fork Mechanism Introduced

The Blob Parameter Only (BPO) fork switch is one of the best features of Fusaka. This is achieved by enabling ethereum to safely expand blob capacity in the future without complete hard forks, enabling the network to transition to biannual upgrades as ConsenSys proposes.

This will mean that Ethereum will be able to iterate faster, responding to the increasing rollup demand and keeping the ecosystem stable. The developers and node operators are now able to expect faster upgrades and easier transitions of L2 integrations.

PeerDAS Enhances Data Availability Monitoring

• Another system that Fusaka introduces is PeerDAS, which is a new system that can be used to monitor the availability of blob data on the network. 

• PeerDAS is developed in collaboration with the P2P team of the Ethereum Foundation, and probes nodes such as Prysm and Lighthouse after every 80 seconds, and verifies storage commitments with KZG commitments.

• The system uses 128 erasure-coded blob columns in order to ensure that peers store the data they claim. 

• This minimizes node storage requirements, as well as guarantees scalability and reliability of data distribution throughout the network. 

• Preliminary ethPandaOps testing shows a high level of compliance, and a new dashboard shows custody verification in real-time.

Source: X

Impact on Layer 2 and Rollup Ecosystems

The Fusaka upgrade is a major improvement of Layer 2 rollups in terms of throughput and reduced transaction costs. 

The upgrade is likely to be beneficial to the Superchain and other Layer 2 ecosystems built on optimism, which will potentially be able to handle over 100,000 transactions per second with future upgrades, such as Glamsterdam, adding parallel execution and sub-second finality.

This is a significant step towards the scalability strategy of Ethereum, and it will make the network more effective for its developers, traders, and regular users.

Collaboration and Future Outlook

The success of Fusaka highlights the significance of the cooperation between the ETH Foundation, the developers of nodes, and community contributors. 

Combining PeerDAS and implementing new fork functionality, ETH became a new standard in transparency, scalability, and L2 preparedness of the network.

The developers and validators are also advised to observe the network, report any problems, and investigate the new tools to verify real-time data.

Conclusion

The upgrade is a revolutionary MOVE to scalable and cost-effective blockchain infrastructure, which prepares the way to L2 rollups that are faster and further ecosystem innovation.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.