The Ethereum network prepares for a decisive moment this Wednesday with the implementation of the awaited Fusaka upgrade, an event that marks a radical shift in its development philosophy. Far from the old and massive multi-year overhauls, this milestone demonstrates for the first time the ecosystem’s ability to execute focused, high-impact technical improvements in cycles of just six months. Chris Berry, head of onchain engineering at Bitwise Onchain Solutions, highlights that the network is adopting a much more strategic stance, prioritizing speed and precision in the delivery of its technological innovations.
The heart of this technical advance lies in Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-7594, technically known as Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS). This tool completely reconfigures the management of data coming from rollups, eliminating the need for nodes to download entire information blobs. Instead, the system allows verifying small samples distributed across the network, which drastically reduces data duplication and bandwidth, freeing up vital room to process more information without requiring data-center hardware from operators.
Under the hood, this improvement formalizes an unprecedented process for adjusting blob capacity through an exclusive “blob-parameter-only” schedule. Previously, any change in limits required a full and complex hard fork; now, Ethereum will be able to deploy pre-planned increases in blob targets fluidly. Steve Berryman, from Bitwise, notes that this approach not only optimizes technical efficiency but keeps fundamental decentralization values intact, ensuring that home validators can continue participating without being displaced by unreachable technical requirements.
Are we facing the end of bottlenecks on Ethereum’s base layer?
The rollup-centric roadmap depends on a healthy economic symbiosis between Layer 1 and Layer 2, where data space must be accessible but fairly compensated. This upgrade seeks to rebalance fees to ensure the main network is not exploited when utilization is low, while offering predictable costs for scaling solutions. Early indicators already show a visible reduction in congestion and cheaper gas fees, validating the effectiveness of the measures adopted even before the full fork activation.
Looking ahead, the success of the Fusaka upgrade will not be measured by loud numbers in headlines, but by quiet reliability and the sustained increase in network utilization. The ability to scale without breaking the core is fundamental for the ecosystem to grow organically into this new infrastructure. Therefore, the coming months will be crucial to observe how the network absorbs the additional capacity, confirming if this new fast delivery model can be sustained long-term on the blockchain.
