Ethereum's Fusaka Upgrade Set to Boost Scalability and Cut Costs

The Ethereum network is set to benefit from the Fusaka upgrade, which involves the PeerDAS (EIP-7594) protocol. This change will improve how the network handles blob data, reducing bandwidth requirements for validators by a factor of eight.

Before this upgrade, every full node on the Ethereum network downloaded and verified every single piece of blob data to ensure its availability. The PeerDAS protocol changes this approach by splitting each blob into 128 columns using Reed-Solomon erasure coding. A block proposer organizes these encoded blobs into a 2D matrix and disseminates them across 128 subnets, ensuring the network can reconstruct the original data even if half of the pieces disappear.

This upgrade has been tested on the Hoodi testnet, but it exposed some issues with scaling. Increasing the number of blobs per block leads to increased latency for validators, particularly in the lower percentiles. In the Hoodi testnet, which used BPO2 with a 14 target and 21 maximum, the p99 failed attestation rate reached 37% for 21 blobs.

The PeerDAS protocol also changes the way proposers work on the network. They must compute and upload more data per block, creating pressure on the proposer-builder separation supply chain. Validators must receive blocks and required blob columns within 4 seconds of the slot starting. If the number of blobs exceeds 9, some nodes fail to receive the block in time.

The upgrade also has implications for Layer 2 (L2) networks like Arbitrum and Base. PeerDAS allows rollups to post more data, reducing fees and changing the economics of L2 transactions. In February 2026, an Arbitrum swap cost a user $0.008, down from $0.34 a year earlier.

The collapse in gas and blob fees has also led to a shift away from dedicated L2 chains like Namechain, which was cancelled due to the reduced costs of storing data on the main Ethereum network.