In 2026, the cryptocurrency landscape is undergoing a notable shift, with the focus of investors and developers moving away from price fluctuations to focus on fundamental improvements to blockchain protocols. Major networks such as Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche are preparing significant upgrades, while Coinbase’s Base network has already launched its Beryl fork, aiming to streamline operation with new token standards and shorter withdrawal windows.
However, Bitcoin’s development continues at a slower pace, with discussions still active about proposedcovenantand post-quantum security enhancements. Tim Sun, senior researcher at Hong Kong-based HashKey Group, noted that while previous updates prioritized features, speed and capacity, 2026 marks an increased emphasis on reliability, predictable governance and institutional-grade infrastructure, elements crucial to large-scale financial use.
Below, we detail the top five blockchain upgrades worth paying attention to in the second half of 2026.
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The Glamsterdam update and its scalability goals
The update known as Glamsterdam is considered one of the most important in 2026 and is already in the testing phase on development networks. According to Ethereum’s public roadmap, this improvement aims to improve scalability, strengthen the base layer (Layer-1) and simplify the use of the network, with the launch on the main network scheduled for the second half of the year.
Tim Sun explained that the update promises to speed up processing by allowing more simultaneous transactions, expanding capacity to handle greater volume of data and reducing database “bloat.” These changes, he says, will make the chain more suitable for stablecoin settlement and real-world asset use cases.
Holly Atkinson, chief product and technology officer at 1inch, highlighted that many see Glamsterdam as the most significant upgrade to Ethereum since “The Merge” in September 2022, which marked the blockchain’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
One of the key points is the separation between proponent and block builder (ePBS), which is incorporated into the protocol. Atkinson noted that the reliance of validators on a small group of builders and relayers concentrates control over the order of transactions, raising risks of MEV (Maximum Extractable Value), censorship, and centralization. ePBS seeks to bring block building and proposing back into the protocol, increasing transparency and accountability.
Pavan Kaur, judge at the Solana Foundation and founder of RuleSpark, added that ePBS should be seen as a step in the broader Ethereum roadmap, and not as a final solution to eliminate MEV or completely resolve builder centralization. She warned that “practices like sandwich attacks may therefore migrate rather than disappear.”
Alpenglow promises to accelerate network finality
The biggest change expected for Solana in 2026 is Alpenglow, a consensus upgrade that restructures the network’s core protocol. This improvement is being widely touted, including by David Liang, leader of the Solana ecosystem, as “the most significant consensus update to date” for the chain.
After overwhelming approval in a governance process in September 2025, Alpenglow is still in development and is expected to launch alongside the Agave 4.1 version of the validator client later in 2026. Arun Krishnakumar, vice president of institutional capital at R3 enterprise software firm, said Alpenglow will be a major boost, further strengthening the “internet capital markets” thesis.
At its core, Alpenglow aims to drastically accelerate the time it takes the network to achieve transaction finality. Instead of the existing TowerBFT consensus mechanism, it introduces a redesigned system centered around a new voting component called Votor.
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The practical impact will be a significant reduction in confirmation times, with the finality expected to be around 100 to 150 milliseconds under ideal conditions, a notable improvement compared to the current 12.8 seconds. In addition to speed, the upgrade will also eliminate on-chain voting transactions, which currently account for a considerable portion of network activity.
By simplifying communication and agreement between validators on the state of the chain, Alpenglow aims to make Solana lighter and more efficient under load. Hadley Stern, board director at DeFi Development Corp, highlighted that the removal of on-chain voting transactions is the “real story” for institutional allocators as it “cleans up the economics of validators and offers honest telemetry, something crucial when underwriting SOL as a treasury asset.” He added that a network capable of migrating its consensus layer so cleanly demonstrates a “governed adaptability that legacy financial infrastructure cannot match.”
Beryl brings improvements to the Coinbase network
The Beryl fork of the Base network went live on Friday, shortly after a brief sequencer-related outage when block production stopped for about two hours due to an invalid block that caused a temporary consensus failure. Jesse Pollak, co-founder of Base, assured that user funds were not affected by the incident.
While Pollak reiterated that “all funds are safe,” he emphasized that “a shutdown is not acceptable” and that lessons learned from the episode will be used to further strengthen the Base as a platform for “24/7 global finance.”
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According to the Base documentation, the Beryl update introduces a set of changes designed to improve network performance and reduce friction. These include the B20 native token standard, reducing withdrawal finality time from seven to five days, and integration with Reth V2, which should decrease node storage requirements and improve execution efficiency.
Tim Sun commented that Base has been moving towards a more unified “stack” approach, which gives it greater control over network construction and updates, allowing changes to be implemented more quickly than in the previous Optimism Superchain model. However, he pointed out that liquidity, which previously moved more freely across the Superchain ecosystem, could become more fragmented, even as Base deepens its integration with Coinbase’s broader user base.
Focus on performance and institutional attraction with Octane and Etna
Avalanche’s next chapter is not just focused on a single brand fork, but a broader effort to improve performance and attract institutions and issuers of tokenized assets. Tim Sun explained that Avalanche’s recent Etna fork replaced the old subnet model with Avalanche’s sovereign L1s, reducing the cost of launching a dedicated blockchain by more than 99% and making the network more attractive to institutional players.
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This approach has already shown positive results. Sun cited Progmat, responsible for approximately 63% of the Japanese security token market, which has migrated more than $2 billion in tokenized assets to a dedicated Avalanche L1. He also mentioned Avalanche Payments Collective, backed by companies like Franklin Templeton, VanEck and WisdomTree.
Holly Atkinson highlighted that Avalanche is also implementing two updates aimed at making its C-Chain one of the fastest environments for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). She described Asynchronous Streaming Execution as a way to separate transaction execution from consensus, allowing the chain to operate more continuously and adjust capacity to normal demand. For users, the practical effect should be greater throughput and lower, stable fees during periods of high activity.
Persistent debates about OP_CAT and quantum threats
Bitcoin stands out as a separate case, as its main developments in 2026 are not scheduled updates, but rather the continuation of intense debates about the programmability of the protocol and the urgency of strengthening it against quantum threats. Since the activation of Taproot in 2020, which improved thescriptingof Bitcoin for greater flexibility and privacy, the network has not undergone a majorsoft fork.
Since then, discussions on proposals related tocovenants, such as OP_CAT, CheckTemplateVerify (CTV), and Lightning Network-focused ideas such as LNHANCE have intensified. None of these changes have a defined activation path. Researchers have also been debating BIP-360 and related proposals, aiming to facilitate the migration of currencies to spending paths resistant to quantum attacks, if the threat of quantum computing becomes real.
Holly Atkinson described Bitcoin as the “wild card” of the group. She pointed out that the proposals forcovenantcould unlock more secure storage andscriptingricher, but the topic remains divisive and widely debated. Tim Sun added that these proposals could improve the security of self-custody, fee management, and protocols like Lightning and Ark, while offering institutions more programmable custody logic directly in L1.
Bitcoin development is known for its slowness, and any change to the protocol is scrutinized exhaustively from all angles. There is a general consensus that noneopcode covenantis on track for activation this year, and reaching agreement on proposals like OP_CAT or CTV is still some way off. When it comes to post-quantum security, the BIP-360 authors estimate that a complete migration to quantum attack-resistant addresses and signatures would take years, even under the most optimistic assumptions. It seems unlikely at this point that a quantum resistance upgrade will be implemented before the end of 2026.