Ethereum Fusaka upgrade launches tonight: Could Layer 2 transaction fees enter the "cent" era?

The Ethereum mainnet activation time is locked in at December 3, 21:49 UTC, corresponding to slot 13,164,544. This upgrade, named Fusaka, is another key move in Ethereum’s “Surge” scaling phase following the Pectra upgrade in May this year.

The core goal of the upgrade is clear: make Layer 2 fees cheaper and boost network throughput. Layer 2 fees are expected to drop significantly by 40% to 60%, and in some cases, possibly by as much as 90%.

01 Upgrade Node: A Global Countdown Tech Moment

The Fusaka upgrade has entered the final countdown. According to official confirmation from the Ethereum Foundation, the mainnet activation time is set for December 3, 21:49 UTC.

Converted to Beijing time, the specific time is December 4, 5:49 AM, corresponding to slot 13,164,544.

This upgrade is different from previous ones—it has already been fully deployed and validated on the Holesky, Sepolia, and Hoodi testnets.

The Ethereum Foundation has even committed $2 million to a bug bounty program for this upgrade to ensure a smooth mainnet transition.

02 Technical Core: The “Dual Blade” of PeerDAS and BPO

The Fusaka upgrade contains around 12 Ethereum Improvement Proposals, with its technical core being the innovative combination of PeerDAS technology and the BPO upgrade path.

PeerDAS stands for Peer Data Availability Sampling, a data availability sampling technology based on peer-to-peer networks.

With this technology, validators only need to sample 1/8 of the blob data, no longer needing to download everything. This directly reduces the bandwidth and storage requirements for nodes.

BPO is a lightweight hard fork mechanism that “only changes parameters, not code.” It allows Ethereum to escape the rhythm of “having to wait for the next big hard fork every time you want to adjust the number of blobs” when it comes to scaling.

03 Performance Leap: Scaling from 6 to 21 Blobs

Before the Fusaka upgrade, Ethereum could only process 6 blobs per block, a limitation that severely restricted L1-L2 data throughput.

This upgrade, using PeerDAS technology, directly boosts the number of blobs per block from 6 to between 21 and 48. It’s widely believed that the scaling magnitude can reach up to 8x.

The gas limit for Ethereum blocks is also increasing from 30 million to 60 million, with some technical sources indicating it could rise to 150 million. This will bring L1 base layer transaction processing capacity to the 40-60 TPS range.

04 Market Impact: L2 Ecosystem and Price Dynamics

On the market side, the Fusaka upgrade is seen as one of the catalysts for Ethereum’s return to the $3,000 mark. Recently, Ethereum’s price has shown significant volatility, climbing rapidly from around $2,852 to nearly $2,980.

Crypto analyst Ted Pillows points out that if Ethereum’s price can stabilize above $3,000, it may further expand up to $3,400.

For Layer 2 networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base, the reduced bandwidth pressure brought by Fusaka will directly translate to lower transaction fees. Network throughput could theoretically surge to 10,000+ TPS.

Institutional investors have also shown clear interest in Ethereum. As of November 26, spot Ethereum ETFs have recorded four consecutive days of inflows, with a net inflow of $60.8 million.

05 Layered Upgrade: A Three-Step Steady Scaling

Fusaka’s upgrade path adopts a cautious “three-step” strategy rather than an all-at-once approach to ensure network stability and security.

The first stage is the Fusaka upgrade on December 3, with parameters set at Target: 6 / Max: 9, matching the Pectra version. This is essentially a “safety observation period” to verify the stability of the PeerDAS mechanism under current traffic.

The second stage is BPO 1, planned for December 9, adjusting parameters to Target: 10 / Max: 15.

The third stage is BPO 2, expected to be implemented on January 7, 2026, with parameters finally adjusted to Target: 14 / Max: 21. This means the final capacity will be 2.3 times that of pre-upgrade.

06 Developer Changes: New Limits Introduced by EIP-7825

An important change introduced in the Fusaka upgrade is EIP-7825, which sets a gas limit per transaction.

Previously, a single transaction could consume the entire block’s gas, which posed a DoS risk in parallel execution environments. After the upgrade, the gas consumed per transaction is capped at 2²⁴, about 16.78M gas.

This change will directly affect operations that require large amounts of gas, such as heavy contract deployments, large-scale batch operations, and routers/aggregators that chain multiple calls in one transaction. Developers will need to split large operations into multiple transactions.

07 Competitive Landscape: Rollup Strategies Based on Ethereum

The Fusaka upgrade will gradually evolve the Ethereum mainnet into a high-capacity settlement platform. This positioning shift marks Ethereum’s transition from an “execution platform” to a “settlement and data availability layer.”

Rollup-based L2 solutions will have a more favorable development environment, as they can utilize mainnet data availability more efficiently.

At the same time, the deterministic proposer preview feature introduced by EIP-7917 paves the way for “Ethereum-based” rollups. In this scenario, Ethereum validators will be responsible for ordering L2 transactions.

08 Next Blueprint: From Fusaka to Glamsterdam

After the Fusaka upgrade, Ethereum’s next major update is already on the agenda: the Glamsterdam upgrade, expected in 2026.

Glamsterdam plans to introduce two key technologies: ePBS (embedded proposer-builder separation) and BALs (block-level access lists).

These technologies will further optimize Ethereum’s handling of maximum extractable value and improve execution efficiency. If Fusaka is successfully implemented as planned, it will mark Ethereum’s shift from isolated upgrades to a unified scaling strategy, balancing decentralization and high throughput.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is optimistic about the network’s future development, hinting that the gas limit may continue to increase while maintaining network security.

Future Outlook

In the Layer 2 ecosystem battleground, Arbitrum network node operators are already prepared. Other major Layer 2 networks such as Optimism and Base will also reap the same technical dividends.

Ethereum has completed its positioning transformation from a “world computer” to a “global settlement layer.” Fusaka is a key technological milestone driving this transformation, redefining Ethereum’s role and boundaries in the crypto world.

Layer 2 fees are entering the “cent” era—what does this mean for the crypto market? The answer is that this upgrade not only reduces transaction costs, but more importantly, could trigger a reallocation of ecosystem and traffic, ushering in a new chapter for the Ethereum ecosystem.