Ethereum Upgrade Expands Critical Path for Transaction Validation

The Ethereum network is getting an upgrade that will significantly increase the time it takes to validate and process transactions. The new upgrade, known as Glamsterdam, aims to address a bottleneck in the current system where blocks can take up to two seconds to be validated. With the new upgrade, this critical path will expand to around nine seconds.

The development team has set up a public network called Platåberget, which allows node operators and developers to test and rehearse the upgrade before it goes live on mainnet. This network is expected to remain active until Glamsterdam reaches its full deployment.

The most significant architectural change in the new upgrade is EIP-7732, also known as enshrined proposer-builder separation. This proposal separates consensus-block validation from execution-payload validation and introduces a Payload Timeliness Committee to report on payload timing.