Published date: January 5, 2026 20:56
Ethereum (ETH) started 2026 by reclaiming the $3,000 mark, but the real story lies in its fundamental technological and philosophical transformation.
With the successful activation of the Fusaka upgrade on December 3, 2025, the network finally achieved the “holy grail” of scalability. The introduction of PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) allows the Layer 2 network to scale exponentially without congesting the mainnet, effectively turning Ethereum into the high-speed payment layer of global finance.
On January 2nd, co-founder Vitalik Buterin released his 2026 “manifesto,” positioning Ethereum as a “rebellion” against the increasingly centralized internet.
He argued that the network is evolving beyond just a blockchain into a “civilized infrastructure” that can resist censorship and third-party interference. This change is reflected in the 2026 roadmap, which promises two major hard forks a year, Gramsterdam and Hegota, to accelerate the transition to “statelessness” through the Burkle tree.
Despite a 40% drawdown from its all-time high in August 2025, institutional “whales” like Bitmine have been aggressively accumulating, adding over 44,000 ETH in the last week alone.
The consensus among technical analysts is that Ethereum’s move towards proposer-builder separation (ePBS) will finally resolve the centralization pressures of MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) and solidify its position as the world’s most decentralized programmable computer.
Ethereum aims to support over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) across its integrated rollup ecosystem by the end of 2026, making traditional banking rails obsolete.
