Glamsterdam on Ethereum launched on Sepolia, with a target gas limit of approximately 200 million

The next phase upgrade of Ethereum, Glamsterdam, was activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, completing block finality during the switch without any critical failures. This upgrade consists of the consensus layer Gloas and the execution layer Amsterdam, incorporating a total of 18 EIPs, designed with a gas limit of approximately 200 million, which is about 3.3 times the current mainnet limit of 60 million. The upgrade will not automatically raise the limit but will allow for larger blocks to be produced safely, with validators deciding whether to increase it.

Key changes include EIP-7732, which embeds the separation of proposers and builders in the protocol, extending the time for most validators to check transactions from about 4 seconds to about 9 seconds; EIP-7928 requires blocks to include the touched state and updated values, facilitating client data prefetching and parallel validation; EIP-7954 raises the contract code limit from 24 KiB to 64 KiB; EIP-8037 increases the cost of creating new storage slots from 20,000 gas to 97,920 gas, while regular ETH transfers remain at 21,000 gas.

The gas limit for the first relevant block on Sepolia was 60 million, reaching 200 million about 11 hours later and maintaining that level. Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter stated that the speed at which various clients handle gas units has improved compared to before the upgrade, with Geth's execution time for a 40 million gas block reduced from about 115 milliseconds to about 30 milliseconds. The Hoodi testnet is tentatively scheduled for deployment on October 27, with the mainnet target set for the fourth quarter of 2026;