Key Points:
- Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade has gone live on the Sepolia testnet, marking one of the final major testing stages before the planned mainnet activation.
- The upgrade introduces enshrined proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists and gas-pricing changes designed to improve Ethereum’s scalability and execution efficiency.
- Developers will next determine Glamsterdam’s activation timing on the Hoodi testnet before setting a final mainnet launch date.
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade has been activated on the Sepolia testnet, moving the network’s next major protocol upgrade into one of its final testing stages before a planned Ethereum mainnet rollout.
Glamsterdam went live on Sepolia at 1:53 pm UTC on Tuesday, according to Ethereum community contributor Pooja Ranjan. The deployment gives developers an opportunity to assess the upgrade under live testnet conditions before moving toward the final activation process.
The upgrade is designed to advance Ethereum’s layer-1 scaling roadmap by changing how blocks are constructed and validated while improving the relationship between execution costs and gas pricing.
Glamsterdam Targets Ethereum’s Core Efficiency
Glamsterdam follows the Fusaka upgrade and focuses on improving Ethereum’s scalability and efficiency at the base-layer level.
Two of its most significant components are enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, and block-level access lists, known as BALs. Together, the changes are intended to support higher throughput and more efficient block processing without relying solely on increases to the network’s gas limit.
EIP-7732 introduces proposer-builder separation directly into Ethereum’s consensus protocol. It separates the role of block proposers from builders while also separating consensus validation from execution validation, giving validators additional time to process execution payloads.
The design is intended to create more flexibility in how Ethereum handles block construction and validation as transaction activity increases.
Parallel Processing Becomes a Major Focus
Glamsterdam also introduces block-level access lists through EIP-7928.
These lists record the accounts and storage locations accessed during a block, along with post-transaction state changes. By making this information available in advance, Ethereum clients can potentially read state from disk in parallel, validate transactions concurrently and calculate state roots more efficiently.
The broader objective is to move Ethereum toward greater parallel processing.
Under the current execution model, transactions are processed in a defined sequence. Parallel processing could allow compatible operations to be handled simultaneously, potentially increasing transaction throughput and supporting larger blocks without requiring a corresponding increase in the gas limit.
Ethereum Targets Higher Gas Capacity
Another major aspect of Glamsterdam is the planned expansion of Ethereum’s gas capacity.
The Ethereum Foundation previously established a 200 million gas limit floor for Glamsterdam, compared with a current network gas limit of approximately 60 million cited in the source material.
A higher gas limit would allow more computational work to be included in individual blocks. Combined with the upgrade’s parallel-processing mechanisms, the change is intended to provide Ethereum with greater capacity without simply increasing the computational burden placed on validators in the same way as a conventional gas-limit increase.
The effectiveness of these changes will be closely evaluated across the remaining testnet stages.
Hoodi Comes Before Mainnet
Sepolia is one of the final major test environments for Glamsterdam. Following the deployment, Ethereum developers are expected to evaluate the upgrade before determining its activation date on the Hoodi testnet.
Only after the Hoodi testing phase will developers establish the final timing for the Ethereum mainnet activation.
This staged approach allows potential issues with block production, validation, execution and network performance to be identified before the upgrade reaches Ethereum’s production environment.
Hegotá Follows Glamsterdam
Once Glamsterdam reaches mainnet, Ethereum developers will shift attention toward Hegotá, the next major upgrade on the protocol’s roadmap.
Developers began reviewing dozens of proposals for Hegotá earlier this year as they worked to determine which changes should be included. Some of the proposals under consideration are focused on expanding privacy capabilities within the Ethereum protocol.
The progression from Fusaka to Glamsterdam and eventually Hegotá reflects Ethereum’s broader strategy of introducing major changes through successive upgrades rather than relying on a single transformation of the network.
Outlook
Glamsterdam’s activation on Sepolia represents an important step toward Ethereum’s next phase of layer-1 scaling. The combination of proposer-builder separation, block-level access lists, parallel processing and expanded gas capacity is designed to improve how the network handles growing transaction demand.
The next critical milestones will be testing on Hoodi and the eventual decision on a mainnet activation date. If the upgrade performs as expected across the remaining test phases, Glamsterdam could provide Ethereum with additional execution capacity while laying technical groundwork for subsequent protocol upgrades.
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