Ethereum Unveils Glamsterdam Upgrade, Largest Protocol-Level Restructuring Since The Merge
The Ethereum network is preparing for its largest-ever protocol-level upgrade, known as Glamsterdam. This significant overhaul will advance L1 scalability and address several key issues affecting the network's performance.
Glamsterdam builds upon the previous Fusaka upgrade and incorporates two major headline proposals: ePBS (EIP-7732) and BALs (EIP-7928). The first proposal, ePBS, aims to eliminate the reliance on external coordinators for block delivery and payment by writing this process into the Ethereum protocol itself. This will enable a trusted on-chain mechanism for block delivery and payment, reducing the need for third-party middleware.
The second proposal, BALs, allows the system to see in advance which transactions won't conflict with each other at all, enabling it to group unrelated transactions and process them in parallel. This will improve scalability by allowing the network to handle more data for Layer 2 networks.
In addition to these proposals, Glamsterdam also includes two supporting re-pricing proposals that adjust storage fees and query fees. The first proposal targets operations like creating new accounts and deploying contracts that permanently occupy space on the network, while the second targets operations that query or read existing data on the network.