Ethereum Researchers Sketch the Next Scaling Steps After Glamsterdam

Core Ethereum researchers published two proposals that set out how the network keeps raising capacity after the planned Glamsterdam upgrade. The first, written for a later upgrade named Hegota, takes the 21,000-gas cost of a basic ether transfer as the anchor and works out how to keep lifting the gas limit, the ceiling on computation per block, without overloading the machines that run the network. The aim is to scale throughput on a measured schedule rather than in one disruptive jump.

The second proposal revisits a mechanism called Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL), originally designed to stop block builders from quietly censoring transactions, and repurposes it as a forced-transaction route for layer-2 networks. The goal is to give users of rollups a guaranteed path to get a transaction onto Ethereum even if a rollup operator stalls or refuses, a property that distinguishes a genuine layer-2 from a hosted service.

Both posts are early-stage and reference proposed standards at very different stages of acceptance, so neither is committed to a release. They sit inside the broader effort, often called Lean Ethereum, to simplify the protocol while increasing capacity and censorship resistance at the base layer.

The detail worth noting is the priority. The censorship-resistance work treats a rollup user's ability to exit without permission as a protocol concern, not something to be left to each operator. That is the difference between decentralization in design and decentralization in marketing.