While Bitcoin maintains its lead as a "sovereign reserve," Ethereum (ETH) is emerging as the technical "operating system" for 2026.
On January 12, 2026, Standard Chartered published a landmark research note predicting that Ethereum is poised to significantly outperform Bitcoin this year.
Post-Fusaka and the AI integration The road to glamsterdamLooking ahead, developers are already finalizing the scope for the Glamsterdam hard fork (expected H1 2026). This upgrade will introduce Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) and six-second block times, aiming to resolve the "blockchain trilemma" once and for all. By moving away from headline-grabbing hype toward durable, public infrastructure, Ethereum is positioning itself as the undisputed settlement layer for the $10 billion real-world asset (RWA) tokenization market.
