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Ethereum in 2026: Glamsterdam and Hegota Forks, Layer 1 Scaling, and More
Key Takeaways
- Ethereum is poised for crucial developments in 2026, particularly with the Glamsterdam and Hegota forks.
- Glamsterdam will introduce perfect parallel processing, increase gas limits significantly, and facilitate ZK-proof validation.
- Layer 1 will see a substantial rise in TPS capacity, while Layer 2 solutions will enable transactions in the hundreds of thousands per second.
- Heze-Bogota will focus on improved censorship resistance with an EIP aimed at ensuring transaction inclusivity.
WEEX Crypto News, 2025-12-26 10:06:42
The Ethereum landscape is on the brink of transformative innovations, especially as we approach 2026. Two pivotal hard forks, Glamsterdam and Hegota, are set to redefine how Ethereum operates, focusing on increased scaling, enhanced security, and broader accessibility. These adjustments hold the promise of significantly elevating Ethereum’s performance capability, addressing both foundational Layer 1 and supplementary Layer 2 scaling challenges. As we delve deeper, we uncover how these modifications will align with Ethereum’s mission to be scalable, efficient, and secure.
Ethereum 2026: Approaching a New Era with Glamsterdam
In 2026, Ethereum will witness a major upgrade as the Glamsterdam fork introduces perfect parallel processing. This advancement represents Ethereum’s commitment to enhancing its technological infrastructure. Current operations involve processing transactions in a singular sequence, akin to a single-lane road causing traffic snarl-ups. However, with the proposed introduction of Block Access Lists under the Glamsterdam upgrade, Ethereum transactions will evolve from this single-lane system to a sophisticated multi-lane highway. Here, multiple transactions will run concurrently, offering a dramatic enhancement in throughput.
Glamsterdam Fork: Unveiling Perfect Parallel Processing
Perfect parallel processing under Glamsterdam is hinged on the introduction of Block Access Lists (EIP-7928). Although the term might suggest a censorship tool, it is quite the opposite. Block Access Lists aim to map the interactions between transactions and which accounts and storage slots are affected. This mapping is essential for enabling these transactions to be processed on multiple CPU cores simultaneously, eliminating conflicts and significantly boosting transaction processing speeds. Additionally, Ethereum clients can preload necessary data into memory, bypassing the need to repeatedly access disk storage, thus tackling one of the most daunting bottlenecks in current processing speeds.
Enshrined Proposer Builder Separation: Enhancing Throughput
Another critical innovation in the Glamsterdam upgrade is the Enshrined Proposer Builder Separation (ePBS). Currently, block builders and proposers work within a centralized framework, often creating bottlenecks in the sequence of creating and validating blocks. ePBS provides a more decentralized solution by integrating this into the consensus layer. It allows block builders to focus on crafting optimal transaction orders, while proposers can select the best block to propose. This separation not only alleviates centric pressures but also ensures that the maximal extractable value (MEV) does not endanger network decentralization or security.
From a scalability standpoint, the separation is critical as it affords more time for ZK-proofs generation and propagation throughout the network – an essential feature since validators currently face penalties for tardiness, deterring them from validating these proofs.
Preparing for the Future: Increased Ethereum L1 Gas Limit
Ethereum’s Layer 1 gas limit plays a pivotal role in determining network throughput. As of now, Ethereum’s gas limit has seen an increase to 60 million. The anticipation is that the Glamsterdam fork will facilitate a further increase, potentially up to 200 million, enhancing Ethereum’s capacity to manage more transactions efficiently. Senior staff blockchain protocol engineer Gary Schulte suggests that such increments could indeed be viable if paired with the shift towards delayed execution strategies. These changes suggest an anticipated rise in transaction capacities, laying the groundwork for a potential throughput of over 10,000 transactions per second on Layer 1.
Layer 2 Innovations: Embracing Data Blobs and Cross-Chain Interoperability
The modifications in the Glamsterdam fork are not confined to Layer 1. They also pave the way for substantial Layer 2 improvements. These secondary chains, which sit atop Ethereum’s Layer 1 network, stand to process hundreds of thousands of transactions per second. A vital innovation to watch here is the increase in data blobs per block, potentially up to 72 or more. This increase provides enhanced space for transactions to occur off the primary Ethereum chain, allowing the main chain to focus on validating crucial transactions that anchor these secondary solutions.
Moreover, the much-anticipated Ethereum Interoperability Layer will enable seamless cross-chain operations among various Layer 2 solutions. This capability promises not only efficiency but also layers of privacy and censorship resistance, further enhanced with the upcoming Hegota fork.
Heze-Bogota Fork: Prioritizing Privacy and Censorship Resistance
As the year closes, the Hegota fork is anticipated to augment Ethereum’s positioning by embedding mechanisms that ensure privacy and counter censorship. Unlike the Glamsterdam fork, which focuses heavily on scalability and throughput, Hegota emphasizes the foundational ideals of the Ethereum project—decentralization and freedom from censorship. A key enhancement through the Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) ensures no valid transaction is unfairly excluded. This feature mandates validators to include specific transactions, thus safeguarding Ethereum’s decentralizing ethos even under potential pressures to exclude certain activities.
Conclusion: The Road Ahead for Ethereum
The planned advancements in 2026 are set to catapult Ethereum into a more efficient, accessible, and secure future. As these forks are implemented, they not only address systematic bottlenecks but also push the boundaries of what Ethereum can achieve on both a technological and philosophical scale. The Glamsterdam fork aims to resolve scalability issues with new parallel processing capabilities, while the Hegota fork pledges to bolster Ethereum’s resilience against censorship, ensuring it remains true to its original promise of decentralized, open financial systems.
FAQs
What are the major benefits of the Glamsterdam and Hegota forks?
The Glamsterdam fork is set to introduce parallel processing and significantly increase Ethereum’s transaction throughput, while the Hegota fork focuses on enhancing censorship resistance and privacy on the network.
How will the Glamsterdam fork improve Ethereum’s scalability?
Glamsterdam will implement Block Access Lists for parallel transaction processing, boosting the overall speed and efficiency of the network.
What impact will Enshrined Proposer Builder Separation (ePBS) have on Ethereum?
ePBS will decentralize block construction by separating the roles of block proposers and builders, thereby enhancing security and potentially allowing higher transaction throughput.
How will Layer 2 solutions benefit from these forks?
Layer 2 solutions will process even more transactions due to increased data blobs, and the new interoperability layer will facilitate seamless cross-chain operations.
What measures will the Heze-Bogota fork introduce to combat censorship?
The Heze-Bogota fork will feature Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists, ensuring validators include specific transactions, bolstering Ethereum’s resistance against transaction censorship.
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This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
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From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."
X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.
WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
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After the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, when will the war end?
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There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."
No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.
In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.
X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.
This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.
The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.
The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.
After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."
From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.
In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.
As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."
Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.
For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.
This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.
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X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.
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WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.
X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.
This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.
X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.
Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.
The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.
X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.
The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.
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