Ethereum has successfully rolled out its Fusaka upgrade, a significant development designed to increase the network’s transaction processing capabilities without compromising its security or decentralization. The milestone earned praise from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who commended the developers behind the long-awaited initiative.

“Big congrats to the Ethereum researchers and core devs who worked hard for years to make this happen,” Buterin stated following the launch.

A Technical Leap with PeerDAS

The core innovation of the Fusaka upgrade is the implementation of EIP-7594, also known as Peer Data Availability Sampling (PeerDAS). This protocol changes how network nodes verify data. Instead of downloading an entire block to confirm its contents, nodes can now sample small pieces of it, dramatically improving efficiency and expanding network capacity.

This advancement is a crucial step in Ethereum’s broader scaling roadmap, particularly its long-term vision for sharding. Sharding is a method that splits the network into smaller, manageable pieces, or “shards,” allowing transactions to be processed in parallel and significantly boosting throughput.

Buterin highlighted the long journey to this point. “Sharding has been a dream for Ethereum since 2015… and data availability sampling since 2017,” he wrote. “And now we have it.”

Strengthening a DeFi Powerhouse

As the largest smart contract blockchain, Ethereum secures over $73 billion in total value locked across various Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications. The network already handles between 1.3 million and 1.8 million transactions every day, and upgrades like Fusaka are essential for supporting continued growth in its ecosystem.

Following the news of the successful upgrade, the market responded positively. The price of Ethereum saw a notable increase, rising about 5% to trade around $3,162 after climbing past the $3,000 mark.