GetBlock's State of Blockchain Clients Q1 2026 Report is Live: Here's Why You Should Read It

GetBlock, a premium RPC node provider and Web3 infrastructure platform, has released its inaugural analytical report: State of Blockchain Clients Q1 2026: Upgrades, Challenges, Promises.

It covers the key milestones and major trends across Solana, Ethereum, BSC, Arbitrum, XRPL, Base, and Bitcoin – in under 3,000 words and 15 pages of main content.

Before you start: just open the report and you can skip the rest of this post. Seriously.

TL;DR: GetBlock has published its first Q1 2026 report on blockchain infrastructure, covering protocol-level upgrades across seven major networks in under 3,000 words.

Contributors, distribution partners, and advertisers for the next edition – How to Crypto for Banks: Q2 2026, scheduled for mid-July 2026 – can reach Vladislav Sopov, Head of Content, on Telegram at @vlad_sopov.

GetBlock's State of Blockchain Clients Q1 2026 Report: What to know

Before we get into what's in it, two fair questions we asked ourselves first.

Why we published this report

Our motivation was simple: outline what actually mattered for the technical development of major blockchains in Q1, and show how developers can benefit from it. All of it as brief as possible.

Why we think we have the right to publish it

First, we know blockchain software. GetBlock supports 130+ blockchains across testnets and mainnets through JSON-RPC, REST API, gRPC, and other interfaces. Our DevOps team keeps full and archive nodes upgraded and follows every client software update closely. That's the foundation of our work – and the reason we started with something as unglamorous as blockchain node clients.

Second, we know what our customers need, because we talk to real developers and entrepreneurs every day. That's the match: the endgame of every software upgrade we cover is developer experience.

GetBlock CEO Vasily Rudomanov put it this way:

And we mean it. We're here to give you the full picture while cutting through the noise. Ninety percent of today's crypto headlines won't be relevant in a week.

But what will?

What's in the report?

The report walks through seven networks and the protocol work happening on each one in Q1 2026.

The Solana section covers Alpenglow (SIMD-0326), the consensus overhaul that replaces Turbine, Proof of History, and TowerBFT with Rotor and Votor, and then gets into four other SIMDs worth watching, plus the launch of Mithril, Solana's first Go client.

Ethereum gets the most ground: the Glamsterdam fork with its ePBS and BAL headliners, the still-unsettled Hegotá scope, the Foundation's draft "Strawmap" running through 2029, the ETH2030 experiment (a client vibe-coded in six days with Claude), and ERC-8004, the new standard for on-chain AI agents.

BNB Chain is covered through its Fermi upgrade and the 20,000 TPS roadmap, and Bitcoin through three parallel threads: OpNet bringing layer-1 smart contracts, BIP 360 on the quantum testnet, and the Cluster Mempool redesign coming in Core 31.0.

The last three sections handle Base's move off the OP Stack into a Reth-based client, Arbitrum's ArbOS Dia fee overhaul, and the XRP Ledger's XLS-85 and XLS-81 amendments for token escrow and a permissioned DEX.

Who is the report for?

The report is written for people building and running Web3 infrastructure, not for readers chasing price commentary or a general crypto overview.

If you're a protocol engineer tracking consensus and execution-layer changes across multiple chains, a validator or node operator planning for upgrades like Alpenglow, Fermi, Glamsterdam, or Base V1, or an application developer whose product depends on the throughput, finality, or fee behavior of a specific chain, this is aimed squarely at you.

It is also aimed at technical leads at trading firms, wallet teams, and institutional platforms trying to figure out which networks are maturing in directions that matter for their roadmaps, whether that's Bitcoin gaining programmability, the XRP Ledger lining up compliance primitives for regulated settlement, or Ethereum's longer-term thinking on post-quantum security and AI-agent standards.

Next steps

First, download the report now. Save it for later, or feed it to Claude or ChatGPT in 15 seconds and get a briefing before your next meeting.

Then - let's make the second chapter together: deeper, bigger, and more unique. We're opening contributor slots for GetBlock's How to Crypto for Banks: Q2 2026, scheduled to go live in mid-July 2026.

Get in touch with Vladislav Sopov, Head of Content, on Telegram: @vlad_sopov.

Spreading the word about crypto, distilling the knowledge, reducing entropy.

Enjoy the read!

Tania and Vlad, GetBlock