Ethereum’s "Fusaka" Era: Vitalik Buterin’s 2026 "Rebellion"

Ethereum (ETH) has kicked off 2026 by reclaiming the $3,000 mark, but the real story lies in its radical technical and philosophical transformation.

Following the successful activation of the Fusaka upgrade on December 3, 2025, the network has finally achieved the scalability "holy grail". The introduction of PeerDAS (Peer Data Availability Sampling) has allowed Layer-2 networks to scale exponentially without congesting the mainnet, effectively making Ethereum the high-speed settlement layer for global finance.

On January 2, co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued a 2026 "manifesto," framing Ethereum as a "rebellion" against the increasingly centralized internet.

He argued that the network is evolving beyond a mere blockchain into "civilizational infrastructure" capable of resisting censorship and third-party interference. This shift is reflected in the 2026 roadmap, which promises two major hard forks annually—Glamsterdam and Hegota—to accelerate the transition to "statelessness" via Verkle Trees.

Despite a 40% drawdown from its August 2025 all-time high, institutional "whales" like Bitmine are aggressively accumulating, adding over 44,000 ETH in the last week alone.

The consensus among technical analysts is that Ethereum’s move toward Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) will finally solve the centralizing pressures of MEV (Maximal Extractable Value), solidifying its position as the world's most decentralized and programmable computer.

By the end of 2026, Ethereum aims to support over 100,000 transactions per second (TPS) across its integrated rollup ecosystem, rendering traditional banking rails obsolete.