Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade passed the rehearsal, scheduled to launch Sepolia on October 6

According to CoinDesk, the Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade has continued to confirm blocks after adopting new block construction rules this week, passing key tests and paving the way for its planned launch on the Sepolia public testnet on October 6. The Nethermind client subsequently completed performance tests involving one of the biggest changes in Glamsterdam, with all 2,302 tests passing, processing 57.07 billion gas in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, averaging about 2.9 billion gas per second.

The benchmark measures the speed of the Nethermind execution software rather than the entire network, testing block-level access lists. This mechanism informs Ethereum nodes in advance about which accounts and storage data will be used in the block, allowing nodes to fetch data and check unrelated transactions simultaneously, whereas the current Ethereum mostly processes related work sequentially, limiting the amount of activity each block can accommodate. About an hour after the testnet launch, Glamsterdam raised the block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million, freeing up space for more payments, token swaps, and other activities per block.

The 200 million gas limit allows Ethereum to absorb more activity before users start bidding for block space, thereby alleviating fee spikes during transaction surges or when popular tokens are launched. Larger blocks are also harder to verify, which may make it difficult for small-scale operators to keep up. Glamsterdam aims to gain additional capacity without excessively increasing chain operating costs. This upgrade also extends the block data propagation time from about 2 seconds to 9 seconds and plans to incorporate the handover and payment of block construction and verification into Ethereum's own rules, reducing reliance on external relay services.