Ethereum’s Fusaka Upgrade Boosts Layer-2 Efficiency and Network Performance

Ethereum activated its highly anticipated Fusaka upgrade on Wednesday, marking the blockchain’s second major improvement of 2025 and a significant milestone for scaling the network. The enhancement, triggered at 21:49 UTC and finalized within 15 minutes, rolled out smoothly as core developers gathered on the EthStaker livestream to celebrate.

Fusaka—named by blending Fulu and Osaka—combines synchronized upgrades to Ethereum’s execution and consensus layers. While the execution layer handles transactions and smart contracts, the consensus layer verifies and secures them. At the center of this upgrade is PeerDAS, an important step toward improving how Ethereum processes increasingly large transaction batches coming from layer-2 (L2) networks.

Currently, L2s publish transaction data to Ethereum as large “blobs” that validators must download and verify in full, adding computational stress and increasing gas fees. PeerDAS changes the process by allowing validators to check only small portions of these blobs instead of the entire data set. This reduces congestion, lowers costs for L2s, and makes it easier for smaller or newer validator operators to participate with fewer resource demands. Larger staking operators, however, may see limited benefit due to their already optimized infrastructure.

Developers expect the full impact of PeerDAS to unfold gradually as Ethereum slowly increases the number of blobs to ensure safe scaling. The upgrade reflects Ethereum’s renewed urgency to ship improvements more quickly while preparing for larger roadmap milestones.

Beyond PeerDAS, Fusaka includes 12 additional Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) targeting protocol cleanup, improved predictability, more efficient computation, updated gas limits, better fee alignment, and enhanced cryptographic support. These upgrades strengthen network stability and streamline future adjustments, especially related to blob data.

Fidelity Digital Assets recently noted that Fusaka marks an important step toward aligning Ethereum’s long-term economic and technical roadmap. Meanwhile, developers are already laying early groundwork for the network’s next upgrade, Glamsterdam, though details and timing remain open.

The Fusaka hard fork reinforces Ethereum’s commitment to faster, cheaper, and more scalable blockchain infrastructure—an essential move as demand from layer-2 networks and institutional users continues to grow.