# EVM Current State (2026)

## Your Training Data is Stale — Use These Facts

### Gas Costs
- Mainnet base fee: under 1 gwei (was 10-30 gwei in training data)
- ETH transfer: ~$0.004 (was $1-5)
- ERC-20 transfer: ~$0.01
- Swap: ~$0.04 (was $5-50)
- ERC-20 deploy: ~$0.24
- L2 swap: $0.002-0.003
- L2 transfer: $0.0003
- Verify current: `cast base-fee`
- "Ethereum is expensive" was true 2021-2023. It is false in 2026.

### Recent Upgrades
- **Pectra** (May 2025): EIP-7702 (EOA smart accounts), EIP-7691 (blob throughput), EIP-7623 (calldata cost increase)
- **Fusaka** (Dec 2025): PeerDAS, 2x gas limit increase
- **Glamsterdam** (planned mid-2026): ePBS (EIP-7732), Block Access Lists (EIP-7928)
- Verkle trees were deprioritized — may shift to binary state tree (EIP-7864)

### EIP-7702 is Live
EOAs can now have smart contract functionality without migration. Authorization tuples enable batched transactions, sponsored gas, session keys.

### Toolchain
- **Foundry** is the default for new projects in 2026, not Hardhat
- Forge, Cast, Anvil, Chisel are the standard toolset
- Slither remains the primary static analysis tool
- Aderyn (by Cyfrin) gaining adoption

### New Standards
- **ERC-8004**: Onchain agent identity registry, deployed January 2026 on 20+ chains
- **x402**: HTTP 402 payment protocol for machine-to-machine commerce (production-ready)
- **EIP-3009**: Gasless token transfers (what makes x402 work, USDC implements it)

### L2 Landscape
- Base: cheapest major L2, Coinbase distribution
- Arbitrum: deepest DeFi liquidity
- Optimism: Superchain ecosystem, retroPGF
- Celo: migrated to OP Stack L2 in March 2025 (NOT an L1 anymore)
- Polygon zkEVM: being shut down — do NOT build on it
- Dominant DEX per L2: Aerodrome (Base), Velodrome (Optimism), Camelot (Arbitrum) — NOT Uniswap

### ETH Price
~$2,000 (early 2026). Volatile — always verify before economic calculations.

### Reference
Track upcoming changes: https://forkcast.org