Key Takeaways
- Ethereum will activate Glamsterdam on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6, with the mainnet still targeted for Q4, though no date is confirmed.
- Glamsterdam introduces major changes to block building and parallel execution, laying the groundwork for a substantially higher L1 gas limit.
- Vitalik Buterin says 2027’s Hegotá could be Ethereum’s last “normal” fork before the network shifts toward proof-heavy, cryptographic infrastructure.
Ethereum has locked in Oct. 6 for Glamsterdam’s next major test, just as co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues the network is approaching the end of conventional hard forks.
The date needs one qualification: Oct. 6 is Sepolia activation, not mainnet. The Ethereum Foundation scheduled the testnet fork for 13:53:36 UTC, while Hoodi and mainnet dates remain undecided. Mainnet is currently expected in Q4 2026.
What makes Glamsterdam significant is that it is not simply another collection of Ethereum Improvement Proposals. It starts changing the architecture needed for Ethereum to process substantially more activity.
Glamsterdam Prepares Ethereum for 200M Gas
Two proposals sit at the center of Glamsterdam.
EIP-7732 brings proposer-builder separation directly into Ethereum’s protocol. Builders commit to execution payloads before revealing them, while validators have more time to verify execution rather than being squeezed into today’s tighter block-building window.
EIP-7928 introduces block-level access lists, allowing clients to identify which accounts and storage locations transactions touch and perform more work in parallel.
The Ethereum Foundation says testing has produced a credible 200-million post-Glamsterdam gas-limit floor, enabled by ePBS, access-list optimizations, and new state-pricing rules. That would provide considerably more execution capacity, although validators ultimately determine the gas limit rather than the fork automatically setting it.
More Capacity Comes With Breaking Changes
Scaling Ethereum this aggressively creates compatibility risks.
Glamsterdam reprices state creation and access to prevent higher throughput from causing uncontrolled database growth. Ethereum Foundation testing found that a small group of existing smart contracts could break or degrade because they rely on current gas assumptions, although the large majority were unaffected.
Wallets, indexers, and gas estimators relying on hardcoded gas limits also require updates.
So Oct. 6 is effectively a stress test for whether Ethereum can increase capacity without making node operation significantly harder.
Vitalik Says “Normal” Forks Are Nearing Their End
Glamsterdam also arrives as Buterin sketches a much more radical Ethereum.
In a Sept. 27 essay, he described Ethereum’s destination as a “cryptographic world computer”, increasingly relying on cryptographic proofs rather than every node directly repeating and storing everything.
He expects Hegotá, planned after Glamsterdam, to be Ethereum’s last relatively “normal” fork before changes involving recursive STARKs, stronger formal verification, redesigned consensus and quantum-resistant cryptography become increasingly central.
Glamsterdam therefore matters beyond its immediate throughput gains. It may be one of Ethereum’s final upgrades where scaling still looks primarily like making today’s blockchain architecture faster, before Ethereum starts changing what that architecture actually is.
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Dr. Guneet Kaur is a senior editor at CCN.com and a Science Fellow at Exponential Science. She is a fintech and blockchain expert with extensive experience in digital finance education, blockchain ecosystems, and cryptocurrency markets. She has worked with global media such as Cointelegraph, as well as education and blockchain platforms, to design and lead strategic content and learning initiatives. As an educator and assessor for top-tier executive programs, she bridges real-world fintech trends with academic insight.
Dr. Kaur is also a published researcher and peer reviewer across fintech and data science journals, including Financial Innovation Journal and International Journal of Big Data Intelligence and Applications. Her work spans data-driven analysis, Web3 innovation, and technical content development. With a strong foundation in both industry and academia, she translates complex financial technologies into practical applications, empowering learners, professionals, and institutions across the rapidly evolving digital finance landscape.
