Ethereum Prepares to Upgrade with Glamsterdam

The Ethereum network is set to undergo a major upgrade called Glamsterdam, which will target higher layer 1 throughput and efficiency. The upgrade, scheduled for October 6 on the Sepolia testnet, combines the Gloas consensus-layer upgrade with the Amsterdam execution-layer upgrade.

This move follows years of work to improve the base layer's speed without sacrificing decentralization. As the network has experienced increasing transaction demand, it has exposed limits in sequential execution and raised concerns about block-production centralization and maximum extractable value (MEV).

The Glamsterdam upgrade will introduce enshrined proposer-builder separation, which moves proposer-builder interactions into the Ethereum consensus protocol, and block-level access lists to process state reads and validation more efficiently.

Long-term, the roadmap points toward statelessness and Verkle trees for stronger privacy capabilities, as well as continued improvements to rollup data availability and interoperability.