Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade Takes Shape on Public Testnet

Ethereum's biggest upgrade is coming soon, and developers have started testing it on the Plataberget public testnet. This network will serve as a testing ground for major changes to Ethereum's block building, gas rules, and data access system before the full-scale implementation of the Glamsterdam upgrade.

The Glamsterdam fork is set to go live in August 2026, but developers want to ensure that everything is stable and working smoothly. To achieve this, they are testing the changes on Plataberget first, which will allow them to identify and fix any issues before moving to longer-running networks like Sepolia and Hoodi.

One of the key changes in Glamsterdam is the way Ethereum handles basic ETH transfers. While transfers to existing accounts will still use 21,000 gas, sending ETH to a new account will require extra state gas because it creates new data on Ethereum. This change could affect wallets, gas estimators, and other tools that assume every ETH transfer has the same gas cost.

Glamsterdam also includes several changes aimed at improving how Ethereum processes transactions, such as proposer-builder separation (ePBS) and block access layers (BALs). Additionally, the smart contract size limit will be raised from 24 KiB to 64 KiB, and the maximum initcode size will increase from 48 KiB to 128 KiB.