Ethereum’s Fusaka Upgrade Set to Supercharge Scalability on December 3
Ethereum's network gears up for its most significant scalability leap yet with the Fusaka upgrade launching December 3—promising to slash transaction costs and turbocharge throughput just as institutional money starts circling.
Why This Upgrade Matters
The Fusaka hard fork introduces parallel processing capabilities that bypass current network bottlenecks. Instead of sequential transaction handling, validators now process multiple operations simultaneously—cutting confirmation times by over 60% while maintaining security guarantees.
Market Impact
Traders are positioning ahead of the upgrade, with ETH options volume hitting three-month highs. The timing couldn't be better—traditional finance's latest 'crypto curious' phase means Wall Street might actually notice this upgrade before their usual six-month lag in understanding tech developments.
Developer Response
DApp teams are already refactoring contracts to leverage new opcodes. Major DeFi protocols scheduled mainnet deployments within hours of the upgrade going live—expect a flood of previously impractical applications suddenly becoming economically viable.
Scaling without compromising decentralization—that's the holy grail Fusaka delivers. Now if only we could get traditional finance to understand that 'blockchain' isn't just a buzzword for earnings calls.
Fusaka update to boost transaction capacity, lighten the data burden
The next significant hard fork for Ethereum will also decrease the burden of carrying data for node operators. The upgrade will introduce the Peer Data Availability Sampling, where validators will be able to verify data by sampling peer nodes, instead of downloading entire datasets.
The data solution will be especially useful for rollups, and is expected to increase capacity by up to 10X.
The upgrade will also incorporate proposals to increase transaction capacity on the L1 chain. In total, the Fusaka hard fork will introduce 12 EIPs, mostly targeting scalability.
Currently, the Fusaka upgrade is undergoing a four-week security audit, with $2M in bounties secured by the Ethereum Foundation. Previously, Cryptopolitan reported that the team initially planned the hard fork for November, before facing delays.
L2 chains keep paying minimal fees
Even now, L2 chains pay minimal fees to the Ethereum network. After the initial boost of airdrop farming, L2 chains are now a negligible source of income for ETH.
On the positive side, blobs are rarely full, as protocols adjust their verification. This also means Ethereum’s L1 gas fees remain constantly lower, allowing high DeFi activity with minimal congestion. Blobs are no longer among the most active gas burners, and peak L2 activity no longer affects Ethereum.
Currently, Base is the biggest user of blobs, paying around $6.25K in daily rent. Other networks have increased their economic activity, but still manage to keep their L1 rent minimal. With increased blob capacity, L2 chains will rarely have to resort to calldata, and will not take space in Ethereum blocks.
As of September, over 93% of transactions on the Ethereum ecosystem are happening on L2. At the same time, those chains carry 13.69% of the economic value, as most of the large-scale DeFi operations are still happening on Ethereum’s L1. The ecosystem has achieved scalability for general on-chain ability, but liquidity is still the number one driver of user adoption.
If you're reading this, you’re already ahead. Stay there with our newsletter.
