The next major Ethereum upgrade, called Fusaka, a hybrid of ‘Fulu’ (consensus) and ‘Osaka’ (execution), will change the way the network handles data and fees without changing the primary user experience.
Beneath the surface, it’s a guiding statement: Ethereum’s main chain remains the hub for final settlement and data availability, while daily operations continue to flow toward cheaper, faster rollups.
The open question of whether Fusaka will bring users back to Tier 1 already has an answer. That won’t happen. It makes Layer 2 even harder to leave.
Inside Fusaka: scaling up the plumbing, making the ride smoother
Fusaka’s technical backbone focuses on data availability, sampling, and blob management, which is Ethereum’s approach to making Layer 2 posting cheaper and more efficient. The main proposal, EIP-7594 (PeerDAS)allows nodes to sample only fragments of data bundled together, called ‘blobs’, instead of downloading it all.
That unlocks higher blob capacity and dramatically reduces bandwidth costs for validators, a prerequisite for scaling L2 throughput.
Then comes EIP-7892introducing ‘Blob Parameter-Only’ forks, or BPOs, a mechanism to gradually increase the number of blobs per block (for example, from 10 to 14, or 15 to 21) without rewriting the protocol.
This allows developers to effectively tune Ethereum’s data capacity without waiting for full upgrades. EIP-7918 sets a minimum amount for blobs so that the auction price for data space does not drop to near zero when demand is low.
The rest of the bundle focuses on user experience and security. EIP-7951 adds support for secp256r1, the cryptographic curve used in WebAuthn, allowing password login to Ethereum wallets. EIP-7917 introduces deterministic proposer look-ahead, a small but significant change that helps pre-confirmation systems predict who will produce the next block, enabling faster transaction certainty.
Meanwhile, EIP-7825 limits the transaction gas to prevent denial-of-service risks, and EIP-7935 adjusts the default block gas targets to maintain validator stability.
These upgrades are already live on testnets like Holesky and Sepolia, with mainnet activation expected in early December.
Why Fusaka Matters for Compensation and the Rollup Economics
Fusaka does not promise cheaper Layer 1 gas for users. It is built to reduce Layer 2 costs. By allowing merges to post more data at a lower cost, the upgrade improves economics for networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync.
Internal modeling shows that total costs could fall between 15% and 40% under normal conditions, possibly as much as 60% if the supply of blobs exceeds demand for an extended period. On the Ethereum mainnet, gas prices may remain broadly flat, although future adjustments to block gas targets could reduce them by another 10-20%.
However, the password and proposal updates can make a difference in the way Ethereum feels to use. With WebAuthn support, wallets can integrate biometric or device-based logins, removing the friction of seed phrases and passwords. Because pre-confirmations are enabled by predictable submitter schedules, users can expect near-instant confirmations for routine transactions, especially on merges.
The net result is that Ethereum becomes smoother to use without anyone going back to L1. The rails become faster, but they still point towards the roll-up track.
L1 as settlement, L2 as experience
Ethereum’s architecture is no longer a debate between monolithic and modular design: it is modular by choice. The purpose of Layer 1 is to serve as the high-security foundation for settlement and data availability, while moving actual user activity to Layer 2.
Fusaka reinforces this division. As blob capacity increases, L2s can handle higher throughput for games, social apps, and microtransactions that would be uneconomical on the mainnet. The improvements to the login and confirmation workflows make these L2 environments feel native and immediate, eliminating much of the UX gap that once favored L1.
Where can users still choose Tier 1? In limited cases, this may involve high-value settlements, institutional-scale transfers, or situations where block order accuracy is critical, such as miner extractable value (MEV) management or DeFi clearing. But these scenarios represent a small part of the total activity in the chain. For the rest, L2 remains the natural home.
The bigger story: Ethereum as a layered internet
From the top down, Fusaka is less about gas optimization and more about maturity. It gives Ethereum a scalable framework for adjusting data capacity (BPOs) without disruptive forks, and a UX layer that makes Web3 more like Web2.
Yet the philosophy is clear: the network does not attempt to centralize traffic on the main network. It builds a highway system where rollups handle local traffic, and L1 serves as a courthouse where everything is eventually notarized.
There is also a monetary layer to the story. Cheaper data posting could bring a wave of new low-value applications like social media, payments and gaming back into rollups. Each of these still consumes ETH via blob fees, and with EIP-7918’s minimum fee, these fees contribute to ETH burn. Ethereum’s burn rate could be even higher if activity grows faster than costs fall, despite lower user fees.
On the validator side, PeerDAS alleviates the bandwidth burden, but can create a new dependency on “supernodes” that store entire blob data. That’s a decentralization tradeoff that the community will continue to debate: how to scale data availability without limiting participation.
The balance that Ethereum strikes here, between throughput, usability and trust, reflects the broader direction of the crypto infrastructure. L1s harden into a secure base, while L2s absorb experimentation and scale.
The takeaway
Fusaka is not an attempt to reclaim the spotlight for the Ethereum mainnet. It’s the opposite: a deliberate step to strengthen the foundation for a roll-up-oriented future.
The upgrade expands data capacity, stabilizes costs, and modernizes the wallet experience, but does so in service of the layers above. Ethereum’s L1 is becoming more secure and smarter, while users continue to live on L2s that now run cheaper and faster than before.
By the time BPO1 and BPO2 roll out early next year, the real signals to watch will be blob usage versus capacity, L2 rate compression, and wallet passcode adoption. The outcome will determine how frictionless Ethereum will feel in 2026, not by drawing people back to the main chain, but by making the exits nearly invisible.