The Ethereum Foundation has announced a significant strategic pivot, rebalancing its focus to prioritize Layer 1 (L1) development alongside the continued growth of Layer 2 (L2) networks. This marks the most substantial shift in Ethereum's direction since the adoption of the rollup-centric roadmap in 2020.
The Foundation outlined a revised 2026 protocol roadmap built on three pillars: scaling the base layer, improving the end-user experience, and hardening L1 infrastructure. To coordinate this effort, a dedicated "Platform Team" has been formed to ensure L1 and L2 development progress under a unified framework. The team's mandate includes advancing critical L1 upgrades such as Verkle tree migration, native account abstraction via EIP-7702, and progressive gas limit increases.
This strategic rebalancing addresses a growing concern within the ecosystem. While the rollup-centric model successfully offloaded execution to L2s—which now process roughly 10 times more daily transactions than Ethereum L1—it allowed the base layer to stagnate. This has led to ecosystem fragmentation, with users facing confusing bridging steps, fragmented liquidity, and inconsistent experiences across dozens of active L2 networks. The widening gap between L2 performance and L1's unchanged throughput during congestion has eroded Ethereum's core advantage of composability.
The Foundation frames the move not as a rejection of rollups, which remain central to long-term scaling, but as a necessary correction. The goal is to transform Ethereum L1 from a pure settlement layer back toward a scalable execution environment capable of handling more activity directly. A key long-term ambition is anchored by the Beam Chain proposal, with a target of achieving 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) on the base layer.
Competitive pressure from other blockchains is a clear driver for this shift. Networks like Solana, which have made L1 performance a central selling point, and newer high-throughput EVM alternatives like Monad, have attracted developers and users seeking speed and low fees without L2 complexity. By strengthening L1, Ethereum aims to better position itself against these rivals and capture institutional demand that requires base-layer guarantees for privacy and enterprise-grade capabilities.
