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Key Insight
Ethereum's roadmap in 2025 includes: EIP-4844 (Proto-Danksharding, March 2024 — L2 fees dropped 90%+). Pectra upgrade (2025) with EIP-7702 (account abstraction for EOAs), EIP-7251 (increased validator staking limit), EIP-6110 (faster validator activation). Coming: Full Danksharding (2026-2027 — 64+ blobs per block), Verkle Trees (2026-2027 — enables stateless clients), EIP-4444 (The Purge — historical data pruning). Builders should prepare for EIP-7702 compatibility and continued L2 fee reductions.
What Happened in 2024–2025
EIP-4844 (Proto-danksharding, March 2024): The most impactful Ethereum upgrade for builders since The Merge. Introduced 'blob' transactions — a new transaction type where L2 data is stored in the beacon chain temporarily (18 days) rather than permanently in calldata. L2 fees dropped 90%+ immediately. Every L2 (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base) passed savings to users.
Pectra upgrade (2025): Combined Prague (execution layer) + Electra (consensus layer). Key EIPs:
EIP-7702: Account abstraction for EOAs — allows ordinary wallets to temporarily execute smart contract code without full ERC-4337 migration
EIP-7251: Increased validator staking limit (1 ETH → 2,048 ETH maximum per validator)
EIP-6110: Faster validator activation
What Is Coming
Full Danksharding: The complete version of EIP-4844. Instead of a few blobs per block: 64+ blobs, dramatically increasing L2 data throughput. Estimated: 2026–2027.
Verkle Trees (The Verge): Replace Merkle Patricia Trees as Ethereum's state storage structure. Impact: enables stateless clients (nodes that don't need to store full state). Enables much cheaper state access in EVM.
History expiry (The Purge): Nodes no longer required to store full transaction history. History stored in a distributed archive network. Reduces node storage requirements from 1+ TB to manageable levels.
What Builders Should Do Now
EIP-7702 compatibility: Smart account providers (Safe, Biconomy, Argent) are updating to support EIP-7702's EOA delegation. Wallet developers: prepare for users who will want to use ERC-4337-style features directly from MetaMask without deploying a smart account.
Multi-blob strategy: With more blobs available per block, L2 sequencers can post data more frequently at lower cost. dApp developers: L2 transaction costs will continue falling — price your applications with this trajectory in mind.