glamsterdam

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;

According to CoinDesk, the Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade was activated on the Sepolia testnet this Tuesday, increasing the block Gas limit from about 60 million to nearly 200 million, more than tripling the increase.A review of over 25 consecutive test blocks showed that the actual Gas usage was around 52 million to 92 million, accounting for only 26% to 46% of the available limit, with no instances of full capacity. The upgrade also adjusted the Gas consumption method for specific tasks and the costs of storing data, requiring developers to retest applications involving specific Gas cost assumptions. The next public testnet, Hoodi, is tentatively scheduled to launch on October 27, and the activation date for the Ethereum mainnet has yet to be determined.

Vitalik Buterin retweeted Nethermind's development progress and stated that Nethermind is continuously improving the efficiency and operating speed of Ethereum.Nethermind core developer Ben Adams mentioned that its Beacon Chain plugin has completed synchronization and is ready to handle the Glamsterdam fork on Sepolia; running the Ethereum execution layer and consensus layer as a single application does not seem to incur significant additional memory overhead.The Ethereum Foundation previously confirmed that Glamsterdam will be activated on Sepolia on October 6, and Nethermind 2.1.0 has supported this upgrade.

According to CoinDesk, Ethereum developers released version 7.2.1 of the Prysm client on Monday evening, embedding a 200 million Gas limit to complete deployment ahead of the Sepolia testnet testing for the Glamsterdam upgrade on Tuesday.Glamsterdam is the next major upgrade for Ethereum, which will first be activated on the Sepolia testnet, where developers rehearse changes using tokens with no actual value. Part of Tuesday's testing involves raising the Gas limit on Sepolia from approximately 60 million to 200 million.Gas is the unit that measures how much computational workload a single block can accommodate on Ethereum. A higher limit means the network can handle more transactions and more complex activities simultaneously, but it also places higher demands on the computers running Ethereum. Prysm is the client software used by Ethereum validators, and its previous version had completed before this setting was added to the Sepolia configuration. Therefore, validators running the old version will still produce blocks with a 60 million Gas limit unless they manually modify the parameters, which undermines the effectiveness of this capacity test.Validators running the latest version will automatically start proposing blocks with a 200 million Gas limit when Glamsterdam activates on Sepolia at 13:53:36 UTC on October 6. Ethereum has been gradually increasing block capacity to test how far it can go before running validators becomes too demanding or expensive. The 200 million setting is only applicable to Sepolia, and Glamsterdam has not yet been activated on the Ethereum mainnet.

The Ethereum Foundation announced that the Ethereum network upgrade Glamsterdam will be activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 21:53:36 Beijing time, corresponding to epoch 353024 and slot 11296768. The activation date for Hoodi and the mainnet has not yet been determined.Glamsterdam combines the execution layer Amsterdam upgrade and the consensus layer Gloas upgrade. Key changes include the embedded proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists to enhance L1 throughput, as well as adjustments to gas billing to better reflect the costs of execution and state growth. Node operators must update their execution layer and consensus layer clients before activation. Contracts relying on fixed gas assumptions may need to be modified.

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.

According to a report by Christine D. Kim, Ethereum developers confirmed at the ACDC #186 meeting that the Glamsterdam upgrade will be activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53 UTC. However, there is significant uncertainty regarding this upgrade—currently, the latest private testnet Glamsterdam-Devnet-9 is not stable, and a serious vulnerability has been discovered in the consensus layer that could cause the entire network to stop producing blocks. The execution layer EIP-8037 also has bugs that need to be fixed.Developers will launch Devnet-10 in the coming weeks, and if Devnet-10 remains unstable, the Sepolia upgrade date may be postponed. The activation schedule for the Hoodi testnet and mainnet is currently undetermined, and whether the goal of launching the mainnet by the end of the year can be achieved remains uncertain.

The Ethereum Foundation issued a reminder that the Glamsterdam upgrade will include adjustments to Gas fees (EIP-8037 and EIP-8038), involving changes to the costs of state creation and access. Most contracts will not be affected, but some contracts that rely on hard-coded Gas values and other old assumptions may need to be updated; otherwise, they may fail or experience performance degradation.

According to CoinMarketCap, the Ethereum Foundation has allocated a total of $5.5 million in grants in the second quarter of 2026, covering areas such as ecosystem development, research related to zero-knowledge proofs, and security audits.The related grant arrangements aim to support the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, focusing on strengthening network infrastructure and technical security capabilities, and continuously promoting the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) warns that changes to the Gas model in the Glamsterdam upgrade may cause some wallets, indexers, and Gas estimation tools to become ineffective. The EF Protocol DevOps team stated that tools relying on hard-coded maximum Gas limits will fail, and developers need to update relevant systems and test on the Plataberget public testnet.Plataberget went live on August 13 and is planned to run for several months. The Glamsterdam fork is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum network on Thursday, followed by deployment to the Sepolia and Hoodi testnets. EIP-8037 will introduce an independent state Gas dimension for operations that create new states. Transferring ETH to existing accounts will still require 21,000 Gas, while transferring to new accounts will incur additional state Gas; developers should also re-evaluate software that considers 21,000 Gas as the total cost for all ETH transfers or only uses a single Gas dimension to estimate transaction fees.

The Ethereum Foundation's DevOps team announced the launch of the Platåberget testnet as an early public testing environment for the Glamsterdam (Gloas + Amsterdam) upgrade. This testnet is open to the community and is planned to run for several months, providing developers with a stable experimental platform to identify and fix issues before the upgrade is deployed to long-term testnets like Sepolia and Hoodi. The Glamsterdam hard fork is scheduled to activate on August 20 on this testnet.The Glamsterdam upgrade includes several significant changes to both the consensus layer and execution layer, including built-in proposer-builder separation (ePBS), block-level access lists (BALs), gas repricing targeting approximately 200 million gas, an increase in the maximum contract deployment size from 24KiB to 64KiB, an increase in the initcode limit from 48KiB to 128KiB, and forward-compatible consensus data structures. Relevant EIPs are summarized in meta EIP-7773. Gas repricing will affect wallets, indexers, and gas estimation tools, and any tools with hard-coded maximum gas limits will need to be updated; EIP-8037 also introduces an independent state gas dimension, where new accounts or writing to new storage slots will be charged by state bytes.The Platåberget validator set is small and allows public participation, supporting deposits from validators or builders submitted through the Dora browser. The testnet provides one-click resources to add networks, faucets, and client images. The community can provide feedback on issues in the Ethereum R&D Discord and related specification repositories.

Ethereum core developer Terence posted on the X platform that the Ethereum Glamsterdam devnet-6 has been released, and significant progress has been made in the testnet. EIP-8282 introduces ePBS builder execution requests, which include two new system contracts. On the execution layer, based on the work from post-bal-devnet-7, EIP-2780, 8038 (repricing), 7997, 8246, and 8070 (optional) have been added, and modifications have been made to EIP-7954 (64 KiB), 8037 (source-based refunds), and 7928 (BAL×7702 preheat maintaining status quo).

The Ethereum Glamsterdam hard fork entered the final development testnet phase on Tuesday, locking in ten EIP proposals, positioned as the largest protocol upgrade since the merge.The two core proposals are: EIP-7732, which directly writes the proposer-builder separation (ePBS) into the consensus layer, replacing the current reliance on off-chain relays like MEV-Boost; and EIP-7928, which introduces block-level access lists (BALs), allowing validators to process unrelated transactions in parallel. The combination of these paves the way for a 200 million Gas limit, increasing approximately three times from the current level of about 60 million, with theoretical throughput reaching around 10,000 TPS.On the user side, EIP-2780 is expected to make standard ETH transfers up to 71% cheaper. The mainnet activation date has yet to be determined and must first complete validation on the Holesky and Hoodi testnets. Based on historical rhythms, it is expected to go live between September and December 2026. The 200 million Gas limit is a design goal rather than a fork-enforced value, ultimately to be gradually increased by validators through Gas voting signals.

According to CoinDesk, Ethereum developers have entered the final development phase of the Glamsterdam upgrade, running a developer network (devnets) that includes all planned EIPs, which will then be deployed to the public testnet. Parithosh Jayanthi, a core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, stated that this is the final stage before codebase hardening and testnet launch, and although there is no fixed timeline, significant progress has been made. Glamsterdam is expected to launch on the mainnet in the second half of this year and is described as "the largest upgrade since the merge," which will change many assumptions about Ethereum and lay the groundwork for larger-scale expansions in the future.Key features include EIP-7732 (built-in proposer-builder separation), which incorporates a separation mechanism for block construction and proposal into the core protocol to reduce MEV manipulation opportunities; and EIP-7928 (block-level access lists), which allows blocks to declare in advance the accounts and contract data they will access, improving execution efficiency. Glamsterdam also includes a series of gas repricing that will significantly change the operational costs on Ethereum: high-computation operations will become cheaper, while state management costs will increase.

The Ethereum Foundation has appointed three new co-leads, Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik, to lead the main protocol cluster. The team handover work is now fully underway. The focus for the future is to release Glamsterdam, continue preparations for Hegotà, and advance Strawmap.

The Ethereum Foundation disclosed the results of a recent interoperability meeting held by core developers in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway and updated the key technical progress for the next phase upgrade, Glamsterdam. During the meeting, multiple client teams collaborated on network scalability and execution layer optimization, making progress in several directions. Developers confirmed that based on the comprehensive results of ePBS, BAL optimization, and the EIP-8037 repricing mechanism, a consensus on the "trusted path" after Glamsterdam has been reached.In terms of the execution layer, ePBS (External Proposer Separation Architecture) has been stably running in the multi-client Glamsterdam-devnet, and the external block builder process has completed end-to-end testing, covering almost all client implementations. Meanwhile, EIP-8037 has been finalized, establishing the fixed cost_per_state_byte model, and complete repricing parameter output has been achieved in bal-devnet-6. The scalability direction Hegotá has also made progress. The FOCIL-related prototype has a runnable implementation, and the scope of account abstraction (AA) requirements has been defined, with the next phase entering the multi-client development network verification stage.Current development focus remains on the final implementation of Glamsterdam while advancing the Hegotá scalability design and subsequent Strawmap route evolution. The development network is online, and functionalities such as FOCIL are expected to continue deepening in the next phase of testing. At the organizational level, this interop meeting also marks the formal initiation of leadership structure adjustments within the Protocol Cluster. The new leaders include Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik. Will Corcoran is responsible for zkVM proof and post-quantum consensus coordination, Kev Wedderburn leads zkEVM development, and Fredrik is in charge of protocol security and the Trillion Dollar Security project.Original Protocol Cluster leadership team members Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko will gradually step back from management roles, and Alex Stokes is entering a leave period. The foundation stated that during its term, the Protocol has completed modular advancement and facilitated the launch of the Fusaka upgrade (December 2025), introduced PeerDAS, and enhanced mainnet gas capacity.

The Ethereum Foundation published a summary of the Soldøgn Interop work, which has now basically completed the key goals of the Glamsterdam upgrade, including reaching consensus on the post-upgrade 200 million Gas Limit lower bound, achieving stable operation of the ePBS external Builder process, and finalizing the EIP-8037 Gas repricing parameters.The focus of the Glamsterdam upgrade is to enhance security by increasing the Gas Limit to expand Ethereum's throughput, while EIP-8037 will prevent state bloat caused by a high Gas Limit by raising the cost of state creation. The Ethereum Foundation also stated that most clients have completed stable operation on glamsterdam-devnet-2 and successfully tested the entire external Builder process. Additionally, substantial progress has been made on FOCIL, native account abstraction, and Hegotá upgrade-related features. In the coming weeks, core developers will continue to advance client hardening, testing improvements, and code merging, with final parameters to be publicly confirmed in the AllCoreDevs meeting.