Ethereum prepares Glamsterdam testnet upgrade, targeting higher L1 throughput and efficiency

Ethereum will activate the Glamsterdam upgrade on Sepolia on Oct. 6, targeting block production, state growth and execution limits while laying the groundwork for higher layer 1 capacity, the Ethereum Foundation said in a recent blog post.

The deployment, which combines the Gloas consensus-layer upgrade with the Amsterdam execution-layer upgrade, is the next major step in the network’s L1 scaling roadmap after Fusaka.

The fork would likely be Ethereum’s largest fork since the Merge, according to Ethereum Foundation core developer Parithosh Jayanthi, speaking to CoinDesk. He said the upgrade could change key assumptions about the network and set the stage for further scaling.

Activation dates for the validator-focused public testnet, Hoodi, and mainnet have yet to be determined, the Foundation noted.

The Glamsterdam upgrade follows years of work to make the network’s base layer faster without sacrificing decentralization.

Higher transaction demand has exposed limits in sequential execution, while reliance on specialized block builders has created concerns around block-production centralization and MEV. Meanwhile, simply increasing Ethereum’s gas limit would accelerate state growth and raise the hardware burden for validators.

The headline features are enshrined proposer-builder separation, which moves proposer-builder interactions into the Ethereum consensus protocol, and block-level access lists, which allow clients to process state reads and validation more efficiently. Glamsterdam will also change gas accounting and pricing to better reflect execution and state-growth costs.

Longer term, the roadmap points toward statelessness and Verkle trees, stronger privacy capabilities and continued improvements to rollup data availability and interoperability.

ETH has surged 14% over the past two weeks as crypto and other risk assets rallied. While the upcoming upgrade could fuel further interest in ETH, the recent rise in Treasury yields is creating a tougher backdrop for the rally and could keep price gains volatile.