Author: Mars_DeFi Source: X, @Mars_DeFi Translation: Shan Ouba, Jinse Finance
Ethereum's Fusaka upgrade is the latest step in its decade-long engineering plan—a plan that steadily reshapes Ethereum from a fragile experiment into a global settlement platform.
To understand why the Fusaka upgrade is so significant, and why the network has almost no choice but to push forward with such an upgrade, we first need to review Ethereum's development history.
Ethereum launched in July 2015 with the "Frontier" version.
Key Achievements: The first programmable blockchain; smart contracts ready for production use; a gas-based fee model; a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. The state at the time: No wallet applications; no decentralized finance (DeFi); no non-fungible tokens (NFTs); no supporting tool ecosystem. The Ethereum (ETH) upgrade is currently in its developer-native experimental phase, fluctuating between $1 and $3. No one can predict what form Ethereum will take in the future. Homestead 2016: This upgrade marks Ethereum's maturation. Key Achievements: Improved Protocol Stability Added Opcodes More Secure Upgrade Mechanism Optimized Network Performance Key Events of the Same Year: Collapse of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) Millions of ETH Stolen Ethereum Hard Fork Ethereum Parts Ways with Ethereum Classic The painful lessons learned from this upgrade have made security an unshakeable principle. Auditing has become mandatory, which, while slowing down innovation, has made Ethereum more robust. Byzantium: 2017 This was a significant upgrade at the cryptographic level, with core highlights including: zk-SNARKs Reduced ETH issuance Security optimization Difficulty bomb scheduling mechanism Significance of the upgrade: Ethereum builds a privacy protection infrastructure More secure contract execution ETH Supply Tightens
During this period, Ethereum user demand exploded, earlier than expected. The direct consequences were full blocks, soaring transaction fees, and frequent application failures. Therefore, Ethereum had to address these challenges through efficiency upgrades.
Core Optimizations:
Reduced Cryptographic Computation Costs
Deterministic Contract Addresses (CREATE2 Instructions)
Reduced Issuance (from 3 ETH per block to 2 ETH)
Gas Fee Optimization
Ironically, the St. Petersburg fork was triggered on the day of launch due to a security vulnerability. This event made the Ethereum team determined that upgrades must be done steadily and surely, without rushing.
Istanbul: 2019 Ethereum quietly shifted its focus to Rollups. Upgrades included: Reduced data call fees; Enhanced ZooKeeper support; Replay protection mechanism; Cross-chain functionality optimization. Hidden achievement: Rollup solutions are feasible; Ethereum begins preparations for L2. Muir Glacier: 2020 Ethereum again postponed the triggering of the difficulty bomb. Key Reasons: The Proof-of-Stake mechanism is highly complex. Ethereum refuses to rush the process. Preparations for the merger continue. Phase Three: Decentralized Finance, Non-Fungible Tokens, and Fee Hell (2021-2022) Ethereum became the core ecosystem for decentralized finance (DeFi), ERC-20 tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Accompanying this growth were exorbitant gas fees, frequent transaction failures, and only whales could operate smoothly. London Upgrade: 2021 This upgrade completely restructured Ethereum's economic engine, introducing at its core: Fee Burning Mechanism (EIP-1559) Dynamic Base Fees Predictable Gas Pricing Model Long-Term Impact: ETH Enters Deflationary State During Peak Demand Periods Supply and Usage Tend to Match Ethereum Achieves Congestion (Turning Congestion into Value)
Ethereum accomplished a feat that no mainstream network had dared to attempt before: replacing the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism with Proof-of-Stake (PoS) while the mainnet was running. This event is known as the merge.
This bold move has had a profound positive impact on Ethereum: Energy consumption reduced by 99.95%; Supply reduced by 90%; ETH becomes a scarce capital asset. title="7417862" alt="bWbndSKRzwjD60CFVmHFhCoBz7HihB6w7pHrvcQr.png">Ethereum no longer pursues "handling all executions," but instead shifts to "focusing on all settlements."
This upgrade enabled the unlocking of staked ETH.
Increased Staking
Reduced Panic Selling
Steady Growth in Validator Number
As of Now:
Approximately 30% of ETH is Staking
Number of Validators Approaching 1 Million
The Dencun upgrade introduced the "Prototype Danksharding" (sharding precursor scheme) through EIP-4844.
Instead of directly implementing complete shards, a special transaction type was added to carry "data blocks." This temporarily stored Rollup data is cheaper than accessing raw data and is automatically pruned and cleaned. Key Achievements: L2 Fees Reduced by 90% Rollup Ecosystem Experiences Explosive Growth Ethereum Achieves "Low Cost" Without Changing its Core Architecture Pectra: 2025 This phase is Ethereum's "User Experience Optimization Era," giving Ethereum true practical value. Core Introductions:
Smart Wallet Functionality
Gas Abstraction (No need to directly hold ETH to pay transaction fees)
Validator Integration
Unified Execution and Consensus Layers
Ethereum's accessibility is greatly improved, better meeting the needs of investors.
Ethereum's accessibility is greatly improved, better meeting the needs of investors.
It should be clarified that Vitalik Buterin divides Ethereum's development into five stages:
Scaling: Increasing network throughput
MEV Resistance: Resisting Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) Attacks
Statelessness: Achieving statelessness
Optimization: User Experience Upgrade
The Fusaka upgrade comprehensively covers these five phases at the architectural level and is hailed as a "breakthrough upgrade for scaling." Scheduled to launch on December 3, 2025, this upgrade is the most far-reaching since the merger.
If the merger redefined how Ethereum achieves consensus, then the Fusaka upgrade reshapes its data processing model.
If the merger redefined how Ethereum achieves consensus, then the Fusaka upgrade reshapes its data processing model.
Core Impacts:
Bandwidth consumption reduced by 70%-80%
Reduced node operating costs
Increased decentralization
Rollup achieves secure scaling
When the Fusaka upgrade starts, the blob limit will maintain the standard of the Dunkun upgrade (the target value and maximum value per block remain unchanged), but the roadmap plans for a subsequent "BPO" hard fork to gradually increase the limit to 10 blocks per block, eventually reaching 14 data blocks.
With PeerDAS alleviating bandwidth pressure, Ethereum can withstand this scaling without squeezing small node operators off the network. Blob Scaling Path: Number of Blocks per Block: 6 → 10 → 14 Data Volume Increases by Over 67% Rollup Congestion Eased Transaction Fees Further Decrease A Thriving Economic Cycle is Formed: More Blocks → More Rollups → More Transactions More Transactions → More Fee Burning → Less Supply In short, Ethereum will further deflate while achieving scaling. 3. Increased Gas Limit: In addition to data layer changes, the Fusaka upgrade increases the block gas limit from 45 million to 60 million. This doesn't mean Ethereum will become a high-frequency execution engine, but it does increase execution capacity by about one-third. Complex DeFi transactions, NFT minting, and other high-gas-consuming operations will have more room, reducing transaction failures due to block saturation. A trade-off needs to be made: a higher gas limit will accelerate state growth, increasing the computational load per block and potentially putting pressure on weaker nodes. However, this cost will be mitigated by the accompanying application of Verkle trees—Verkle trees allow for significant compression of state proofs and support new lightweight verification modes. 4. Verkle Trees and State Efficiency: Currently, Ethereum uses Merkle Patricia trees to represent the global state (i.e., the mapping between addresses, storage slots, and their corresponding values). While the Merkle tree concept is simple, the generated proof files are relatively large, typically around 1 megabyte (MB). This makes it costly for light clients to verify the state of a specific account, and also poses a challenge to implementing stateless or semi-stateless nodes. Verkle trees, through vector commitments, compress a large number of key-value pairs into concise commitments. The size of the proof file corresponding to a single key is reduced by an order of magnitude, from megabytes to tens of kilobytes (KB). This allows clients to verify the state with extremely low bandwidth and storage costs. Key Achievements: Proof file size reduced by 90% Lightweight clients become a reality Mobile verification is feasible Stateless nodes are gradually being implemented Meanwhile, a more transparent proposer scheduling mechanism helps reduce the incentive for manipulative behavior related to transaction ordering. In summary, considering Ethereum's upgrade history and Vitalik Buterin's roadmap, the Fusaka upgrade is not a one-off optimization, but rather the final implementation of design decisions made many years ago. PeerDAS and blob scaling advance the "scaling" phase, increasing Rollup's data throughput; More predictable proposer selection and Rollup-related infrastructure support the "anti-MEV" phase, becoming an important component of the MEV governance toolkit; Verkle trees are the core of the "stateless" phase, providing support for stateless nodes and light clients; Increased Gas caps, optimized state efficiency, and subsequent historical data cleanup are closely related to the "Purge" phase; Account abstraction and user-oriented optimizations initiated by the Pectra upgrade continue into "Splurge". These optimizations all rely on the scaling capabilities and state efficiency improvements unlocked by the Fusaka upgrade. Strategic Significance: Technically, the Fusaka upgrade allows Ethereum to support Rollup volumes far exceeding current levels without sacrificing decentralization. Economically, by allowing transaction volume to grow much faster than supply, it deepens the link between network usage and ETH value. In terms of governance and ecosystem, it continues Ethereum's development model—research-driven, cautiously implemented upgrades that sacrifice short-term convenience for long-term stability. Competitively, in the Fusaka era, Ethereum will be positioned as a "settlement and data availability layer," supporting numerous high-throughput Rollups, rather than an all-encompassing monolithic chain. While high-speed, low-cost Layer 1 (L1) networks directly competing on throughput may still have specific niche markets, Ethereum's bet is that a highly decentralized, economically robust, and institutionally recognized settlement layer, coupled with thousands of Rollup ecosystems, will constitute a more sustainable architecture. The Fusaka upgrade is not just another hard fork in a long list of upgrades. It marks the culmination of Ethereum's first decade of research and incremental upgrades, ultimately culminating in a coherent, high-capacity, institutional-grade Layer 1 settlement platform—capable of supporting the global financial and computing systems for decades to come.
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