Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Launches on Sepolia Testnet

Ethereum has successfully launched the Glamsterdam upgrade on the Sepolia testnet, marking a significant step in its development roadmap. The upgrade went live on October 6 at 13:53 UTC, during epoch 353,024, introducing key changes aimed at improving block construction, preparing for parallel processing, and revising gas costs. However, these changes are still being tested and have not yet been deployed on the mainnet.

The Glamsterdam upgrade includes several notable modifications, including the implementation of ePBS (enshrined proposer-builder separation). This change aims to integrate the organization of block content directly into Ethereum's protocol, reducing reliance on external infrastructures and giving validators more time to verify block execution. Additionally, the upgrade introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BAL), which provide information about state elements used by a block, paving the way for more parallel processing and improving the efficiency of block execution.

Another important aspect of the upgrade is the revision of gas costs. EIP-8037 introduces a more precise way to measure the cost associated with new state creation, while EIP-8038 revises the cost of several state access operations. These changes are intended to ensure that each operation pays a cost closer to the resources it actually consumes, preventing an increase in throughput from significantly expanding the size of data each node must store.

Following the successful deployment on the Sepolia testnet, the next step for Ethereum is to deploy Glamsterdam on Hoodi, its other major test environment. Developers will closely monitor the network's reaction to the new rules, including finality, client compatibility, ePBS behavior, block creation, BAL functioning, and new gas rules. Only after thorough testing will the upgrade be considered for deployment on the mainnet, ensuring that Ethereum can securely scale to handle increased transaction loads.