Ethereum Prepares for Capacity-Boosting Glamsterdam Upgrade

The Ethereum network is one step closer to its major upgrade, Glamsterdam. On October 6, 2026, at 13:53 UTC, a public testnet deployment on the Sepolia network will take place, marking a significant milestone in the development process.

Glamsterdam bundles two layers of improvements under one roof. The consensus side changes are grouped under Gloas, while the execution side changes fall under Amsterdam. The upgrade's target is to nearly triple Ethereum's block gas limit from roughly 60 million to 200 million, a move that will significantly boost the network's capacity.

One of the major technical additions in Glamsterdam is enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, introduced through EIP-7732. This feature aims to reduce dependence on external infrastructure by baking the separation directly into the protocol itself. Another significant change is block-level access lists, or BALs, delivered via EIP-7928, which enable safer parallel execution of transactions.

These changes are projected to reduce transaction fees for many common operations by approximately 78.6%. The development teams have been cautious in their approach, pushing back timelines rather than shipping known instability to a wider audience. The road to Sepolia is contingent on continued stability in the private testing environment known as Devnet-11.