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On December 3, 2025, at epoch 280,000, Ethereum’s long-awaited Fusaka hard fork went live on the mainnet. It brought with it a number of improvements that were meant to increase the network’s transaction throughput while keeping its essential values of decentralization and security.
This activation, which came after extensive testing on the Holesky, Sepolia, and final Hoodi testnets in October, includes more than a dozen Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that promise to ease congestion and set the stage for future scaling milestones.
Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, posted a heartfelt message on X to mark the occasion: “It took years to get here. Congratulations to the Ethereum core researchers and developers who worked tirelessly.” As the upgrade went live, Ethereum’s price jumped 6% to a daily high of $3,232, bringing its market cap above $387 billion and showing that investors are excited about the network’s next phase.
The Road to Fusaka: Testing and a Schedule
Fusaka’s voyage really got going at the All Core Devs conference in mid-September 2025, when developers determined the upgrade’s scope after months of making little changes.
The proposal was thoroughly tested on testnets: Holesky replicated validator behaviors, Sepolia focused on rollup interactions, and Hoodi—a production-like environment—confirmed stability under load. It was also backward-compatible to make sure that node transfers proceeded smoothly. By the end of October, shadow forks that acted like mainnet circumstances showed no serious problems, making activation possible.
Tim Beiko, the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support lead, confirmed the timeline at the meeting on October 30: “All testnets are green; we’re ready for mainnet.” On November 15, clients like Geth, Nethermind, and Besu released versions that worked with Fusaka. Operators were told to update before epoch 279,500 to avoid problems. Stakers, who have 28 million ETH (25% of the supply), don’t have to worry about slashing, but Layer 2 sequencers need to adjust to bigger data structures. The fork’s accuracy—starting at a set epoch—shows how carefully Ethereum is run, which is very different from the chaotic 2016 DAO hard fork.
Main Technical Improvements
Fusaka’s strength comes from its focused EIPs, which deal with three main areas: data availability, execution capacity, and resilience.
Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS, EIP-7594) is the best feature since it lets validators sample blob data from one peer to another instead than downloading whole blocks. This cuts bandwidth consumption by 80%, from 1 MB to 128 KB each block. This lets light clients check for completeness without having to sync all the way. Originally planned for Pectra in February 2025, but postponed for polish, PeerDAS unleashes Danksharding’s full potential, aiming for 100 MB blocks by 2027 and ecosystem throughput of 100,000 TPS.
EIP-7691 increases the number of blobs that may fit in a block, from three to six (768 KB total). This makes it easier for rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism to provide cheap calldata because they rely on blobs. According to L2Beat, this might lower L2 fees by 40%. This is important because DeFi TVL is over $100 billion and NFT mints are rising after the 2025 bull market.
EIP-7623 raises the block gas limit five times to 150 million, making it possible for complicated DeFi flash loans, AI oracles, and multi-sig transactions to happen without waiting in line. EIP-7702 improves account abstraction for a gasless user experience. EIP-7732 and EIP-7742 make consensus stronger against 51% assaults, making sure that the network is up 99.99% of the time even with 1.3 to 1.8 million transactions every day (Etherscan).
EIP-7755’s proof-of-stake improvements make things more sustainable by cutting the amount of energy needed for each validation by 15%. With a total value locked (TVL) of $71 billion (DeFiLlama)—a 20% increase over the last quarter—these upgrades make Ethereum the L1 king, ahead of Solana’s $12 billion.
Ecosystem Prep and Security Audit Bounty
Before the launch, the Foundation conducted an Immunefi audit reward for four weeks, paying up to $2 million for flaws. This doubled Pectra’s pool. Hat’s team got $500,000 for a PeerDAS edge case that got more than 50 submissions. “Bounties make sure that code has been tested in battle,” stated Marius van der Wijden of EF. No zero-days came out, which shows how strong Fusaka is.
Ecosystem participants got to work: Optimism’s Bedrock synchronized blobs for 2,000 TPS, while Polygon’s CDK added PeerDAS for 10,000 TPS claims. On December 2–4, Coinbase and Binance stopped accepting ETH deposits. They started again after the fork. Stakers upgraded without any problems, with 28 million ETH at stake.
Reaction from the market and a rise in prices
Fusaka’s activation happened at the same time as Ethereum’s 6% rise to $3,232, which was a daily high and the highest market cap in weeks at $387 billion. The RSI for ETH hit 65 (bullish area), while the number of transactions on the blockchain went up 15% to 1.5 million. “Fusaka’s scalability signals ETH’s next leg up,” tweeted @CryptoWhale, as the total value locked in DeFi rose by $2 billion to $103 billion.
Layer 2s were happy: Arbitrum’s TVL went up 8% to $18 billion, and Optimism’s went up 7% to $12 billion. NFT volumes on Blur went up by 20% since data blobs were cheaper, making minting easier. Bitcoin fell 1% to $118,000, but Ethereum’s rise (+6% vs. Bitcoin’s -1%) closed the difference in dominance to 52%.
What the Long-Term Roadmap Means
Fusaka moves Buterin’s “The Surge” roadmap forward, getting ready for Verkle Trees (2026) and full Danksharding (2027) with 100 MB blocks and 100,000 TPS. It goes against Solana’s boasts of speed (65,000 TPS) and Sui’s object model, and it takes back Ethereum’s developer moat (4,000+ dApps and 1 million daily users).
150 million gas blocks make flash loans and perpetuals possible without splits in DeFi, which increases Aave’s $12 billion TVL. RWAs benefit from blob efficiency, and BlackRock’s tokenized funds are looking for $500 million in assets under management (AUM). Risks: Blob spam could temporarily raise prices, however EIP-7766’s dynamic pricing stops that from happening.
Conclusion
Ethereum’s Fusaka fork, which goes live on December 3, 2025, brings PeerDAS, 150M gas, and doubled blobs. This makes L2s 40% cheaper and gets them ready for 100,000 TPS. With $2 million in rewards and testnet wins, it strengthens the $71 billion TVL network against competitors. ETH’s 6% rise to $3,232 and DeFi’s $103B TVL show that the market is still moving. The era of scaling is here, and Verkle sparks will fly in 2026.
