Ethereum Fusaka upgrade confirmed! Launching on December 3rd, the PeerDAS technology revolution is coming.

The Ethereum Foundation has set the date for the next major upgrade of the mainnet (code-named Fusaka) to December 3. The Fusaka hard fork will implement around a dozen Ethereum Improvement Proposals, introduce PeerDAS technology for decentralized data availability sampling, and increase the block gas limit of Ethereum from 30 million units to 150 million units, with the blob capacity expected to double rapidly.

Fusaka upgrade time officially confirmed testnet deployment completed

(Source: Youtube)

During the all-core developers conference call held on October 30, researchers from the Ethereum Foundation announced that Fusaka will officially go live on December 3. Developers had set this date as a target at least since mid-September, and it has now received formal confirmation. This confirmation came two days after the completion of the final testnet deployment for Ethereum, indicating that the development team is confident in their preparations for the upgrade.

Following the successful deployment on the Holesky and Sepolia testnets earlier this month, Fusaka officially launched on the Hoodi testnet on Tuesday, marking the final step towards Mainnet activation. The deployment of the testnet is a crucial part of the blockchain upgrade process, allowing developers and validators to test new features in an environment that does not affect real assets, identifying and fixing potential issues.

Fusaka's successful deployment on three major testnets demonstrates that the upgraded technology is ready. The Holesky testnet is Ethereum's largest public testnet, with over 1.4 million validators, providing a real environment close to the mainnet. The Sepolia testnet focuses on application developers, providing a stable testing environment for dApps. Hoodi, as the latest testnet, completing its deployment marks that all major testing phases have been validated.

The backward-compatible Fusaka Hard Fork will implement around a dozen Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). Backward compatibility means that old version nodes can still communicate with the network after the upgrade, although they cannot validate new transaction types or use new features. This design reduces the risks of upgrading, providing node operators with ample time to upgrade and avoiding the possibility of network splits.

PeerDAS Technology Innovation Simplifies Validator Access

The most notable aspect is that Fusaka will implement Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS), a technique that simplifies how validators access data. PeerDAS was initially scheduled to launch during the last major upgrade of Ethereum 2 in February, named Pectra, but was postponed due to the need for more thorough testing. This delay reflects the Ethereum developers' high regard for security, opting to delay the launch rather than risk deploying untested technology.

The core innovation of the PeerDAS technology lies in changing the way validators verify data availability. In the current Ethereum architecture, validators need to download the complete block data to confirm that the data is indeed available. This method, as the block size increases, raises the bandwidth and storage requirements for validators, which may ultimately lead to a higher threshold for validators and threaten the decentralization of the network.

Three Major Advantages of PeerDAS Technology:

Reduce Validator Bandwidth Requirements: Significantly reduce bandwidth consumption by sampling instead of downloading complete data.

Enhancing Network Scalability: Paving the way for a significant increase in blob capacity in the future.

Maintain Decentralization: Lower the hardware threshold for running validators, allowing more people to participate in network security.

The working principle of PeerDAS is to split block data into multiple small segments, allowing each validator to randomly sample only a small portion of these segments to confirm with a high probability that the complete data is indeed available. This probabilistic verification method is mathematically secure, but significantly reduces the amount of data each validator needs to process. This technology provides a critical foundation for further scaling Ethereum in the future.

gas limit skyrocketed 5 times blob capacity doubled

Fusaka will also increase the gas limit for Ethereum blocks from 30 million units to 150 million units, which is an astonishing 5-fold increase. The gas limit determines the maximum amount of computational work that a single block can process; increasing the gas limit means that each block can include more transactions or more complex smart contract operations.

The significant increase in the gas limit this time is mainly aimed at blob transactions. A blob is a new type of data structure introduced by EIP-4844 (also known as Proto-Danksharding), specifically designed for Layer 2 rollups. Layer 2 solutions need to submit a large amount of transaction data to the Ethereum mainnet to ensure security, and blobs provide a cheaper way to publish data compared to traditional calldata.

The expected blob capacity will rapidly double. The current target number of blobs per block on Ethereum is 3, with a maximum capacity of 6. After the Fusaka upgrade, combined with the increase in gas limits and the support of PeerDAS technology, the blob capacity is expected to double or even more. This will directly reduce the operating costs of Layer 2 networks, ultimately allowing end users to enjoy lower transaction fees.

From a technical perspective, increasing the gas limit requires careful balancing. The higher the limit, the longer the block processing time, which may increase the uncle block rate and network latency. Ethereum developers have confirmed through extensive simulations and testing that a gas limit of 150 million is safe and feasible under current network conditions. This is also thanks to the continuous optimization of client software over the past few years, enabling nodes to process larger blocks more efficiently.

2 million USD audit competition ensures security

Last month, the non-profit organization Ethereum Foundation launched a four-week audit competition for Fusaka, offering rewards of up to $2 million for security researchers who discover vulnerabilities before the Hard Fork reaches the Mainnet. This public bug bounty program is an important component of Ethereum's security strategy, mobilizing global security experts to participate in code reviews through economic incentives.

The $2 million bounty pool demonstrates the Ethereum Foundation's commitment to security. Bounties range from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the severity of the vulnerabilities. The highest level “Critical” vulnerabilities (which could lead to fund loss or network downtime) can receive the highest rewards. This tiered reward mechanism encourages researchers to dig deeper rather than just report surface issues.

The audit competition is conducted in an open and transparent manner, with participating security researchers from around the world, including professional audit firms, independent security experts, and white-hat hackers. During the competition, researchers can access the complete codebase and testing environment of Fusaka to simulate various attack scenarios. Discovered vulnerabilities will be reported confidentially to the Ethereum Foundation and will only be publicly disclosed after they have been fixed.

This proactive defense security strategy is far more effective than passively waiting for an attack to patch afterward. As a public chain managing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, any security vulnerability in Ethereum could lead to catastrophic consequences. Through auditing competitions, Ethereum can not only identify technical vulnerabilities but also recognize potential economic attack vectors and governance risks.

Deep Impact on the Ethereum Ecosystem

The impact of the Fusaka upgrade on the Ethereum ecosystem is multi-layered. For the base chain, the PeerDAS technology and the increase in gas limits lay the groundwork for future expansion. These improvements are not the endpoint, but rather an important milestone towards full sharding (Full Danksharding).

For Layer 2 ecosystems, doubling the blob capacity means a significant reduction in operational costs. Mainstream Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync heavily rely on blobs to publish transaction data. Cheaper data availability will directly translate to lower user transaction fees, enhancing the competitiveness and adoption rate of Layer 2.

For validators, PeerDAS reduces the hardware requirements for running nodes, which helps maintain the decentralized nature of Ethereum. Decentralization is the fundamental guarantee of blockchain security; if the threshold for validators is set too high, it could lead to the concentration of validation power in the hands of a few large institutions, threatening the network's censorship resistance.