Ethereum's latest upgrade: Fusaka

A short explainer by the Ethereum Foundation featuring multiple contributors who outline the key improvements shipping in the Fusaka hard fork, scaling data availability for rollups, passkey authentication for wallets, and L1 gas limit increases.

This transcript is an accessible copy of the original video transcript (opens in a new tab) published by Ethereum Foundation. It has been lightly edited for readability.

Introduction (0:00)

We upgrade Ethereum two times a year with major changes to how the protocol operates, and the next one upcoming is called Fusaka. It's centered around scaling and making life easier for users of Ethereum — giving rollups and L2s much more scalability. It also brings really exciting upgrades on the UX side and on the L1 side as well.

This is no longer an experiment. This is an inevitability. It means that we can onboard everyone to Ethereum while still preserving the reason it existed. We are not going to sacrifice decentralization in pursuit of scaling. Ethereum will scale and become more secure at the same time.

Scaling blobs for rollups (0:44)

Particularly the scaling benefits — both for the L1 as well as for the L2s. Fusaka is introducing something fundamentally new with its EIP-7594 PeerDAS technology. More data means more blobs, which means more capacity for rollups. That data today is the limiting factor when it comes to the things that rollups need from Ethereum.

If we can reduce the constraint of data availability, we can reduce the constraint of what can be built on Ethereum. You get the censorship-resistant properties of Ethereum in data availability itself.

Passkey authentication (1:14)

And then we have these great UX features. The addition of RIP-7212 unlocks the uses of secure devices like mobile phones, which allows mobile users to authenticate themselves using their fingerprint — especially passkeys, which are coming to L1 Ethereum.

This is really important because it's going to reduce the friction for onboarding new people to non-custodial wallets. It's possible for builders to really think about a very simple end-to-end user experience that doesn't compromise on security for the end user.

L1 gas capacity (1:45)

Some of the other Fusaka upgrades — like block size and transaction size caps — are going to enable us to increase the gas limit. It's basically increasing the capacity, the number of transactions that can be processed, while keeping those really low fees.

It's all about trying to create an environment that scales the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Not only is it reliable and has 100% uptime, but it can ship with velocity.

Looking ahead (2:08)

Our work is not done, and this is the definitive spirit of Ethereum. Fusaka will make layer 2 scalable and then closes this chapter and opens the door to the next chapter — which is scaling the L1.

What comes next? We're just getting started scaling. There's never been a better moment than right now to get involved. Scale the L1, scale the L2s, and simplify the user experience.