Scalable blockchains underpin shift to tokenised finance

As blockchain networks evolve from experimental tools to integral components of digital finance, developers are raising transaction capacities and institutions are testing tokenized settlement on a large scale. This transformation is driven by improvements in layer-two networks, data-availability systems and more powerful base chains, which tackle blockchain limitations such as congestion, high costs, and latency issues.

Ethereum is spearheading this initiative, simultaneously expanding its main network and rollup capacities, while financial authorities conduct tests for shared ledgers in payments and securities.

Ethereum's 2026 roadmap prioritizes scaling, with the network doubling its mainnet gas limit from 30 million to 60 million following upgrades in 2025. The Fusaka upgrade introduced PeerDAS, enabling validators to sample data instead of downloading it all, which increased theoretical blob capacity eightfold and paved the way for rollups.

Rollups execute transactions off-chain, publishing proofs or data back to Ethereum, significantly reducing costs. The next major Ethereum upgrade, Glamsterdam, scheduled for late 2026, will introduce block-level access lists and proposer-builder separation, fostering parallel processing and higher execution capacity.

The Foundation aims to surpass a gas limit of 100 million while maintaining decentralization and network resilience. Rollups are already substantially cheaper than direct transactions on Ethereum's base layer, with current rollups costing five to 20 times less than layer-one transactions. Danksharding, still in development, could eventually support transaction processing rates exceeding 100,000 transactions per second.

As tokenization expands from crypto-native markets to regulated finance, scalability becomes increasingly crucial. Tokenization can alter financial architecture by consolidating ownership, transfer, and settlement onto programmable shared ledgers, potentially allowing simultaneous completion of stages traditionally executed separately.

The Bank for International Settlements' Project Agorá, involving eight central banks and over 40 financial institutions, demonstrates the potential for atomic settlement of cross-border payments using tokenized deposits and reserves.

However, digital economies demand more than just throughput; they require networks capable of handling high transaction volumes while preserving security, finality, and affordability for validators and users. Interoperability between different ledgers and robust legal frameworks recognizing digitally recorded ownership and automated contract execution are also essential challenges.

Interconnecting public and permissioned blockchains introduces operational and security risks, making interoperability a central engineering and regulatory concern.

The International Monetary Fund warns that faster settlement can redistribute risk rather than eliminate it, highlighting the importance of legal certainty, robust code governance, and trusted settlement assets. For businesses, scalable blockchains could support a wide range of applications, from cross-border payments and securities settlement to decentralized finance, gaming, digital identity, and machine-to-machine transactions.

Lower transaction costs are particularly vital for high-frequency, low-value activities, where even minor fees can render blockchain systems commercially impractical. Developers are pursuing multiple scaling models, including layer-two rollups, higher-capacity layer-one networks, data-availability sampling, parallel processing, and zero-knowledge proofs that condense large transaction data into verifiable cryptographic evidence.