Ethereum is preparing the most structurally ambitious upgrade since The Merge. Codenamed **Glamsterdam**, the hard fork — targeted for May or June 2026 — is not a feature release. It is a foundational reconstruction of how Ethereum's base layer produces blocks, processes transactions, and prices ...
"We don't friggin need more copypasta EVM chains." — Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder, Ethereum (February 5, 2026)
Ethereum is preparing the most structurally ambitious upgrade since The Merge. Codenamed Glamsterdam, the hard fork — targeted for May or June 2026 — is not a feature release. It is a foundational reconstruction of how Ethereum's base layer produces blocks, processes transactions, and prices computational resources. At its core, Glamsterdam enshrines Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly into the consensus protocol, introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) to unlock parallel transaction execution, and reprices the gas schedule to reflect actual resource costs for the first time since 2016.
The economic stakes are enormous. Ethereum currently processes 15–20 transactions per second on Layer 1, with a gas limit of 60 million per block. Glamsterdam's roadmap envisions a phased increase to 100 million in H1 2026 and up to 200 million post-ePBS — a trajectory that could theoretically push L1 throughput toward 10,000 TPS. But this is not just a speed upgrade. By moving block construction rules on-chain and eliminating dependence on trusted relay infrastructure, Ethereum is attempting to solve a centralization crisis that has quietly concentrated 94% of block production in the hands of two builders. The upgrade arrives at a critical moment: ETH is trading near $1,960 — down 60% from its August 2025 all-time high of $4,952 — and the Ethereum Foundation is navigating a leadership transition, with co-director Tomasz Stanczak departing at the end of February 2026.
Whether Glamsterdam delivers on its promise or buckles under execution risk will determine whether Ethereum can defend its position as the canonical settlement layer for the multi-trillion-dollar tokenized economy.
To understand why Glamsterdam exists, you must understand the problem it was designed to solve.
Since Ethereum transitioned to Proof of Stake in September 2022, block production has increasingly relied on an off-protocol system called MEV-Boost. Today, approximately 92–93% of Ethereum blocks are constructed through this relay-based infrastructure. The system works: validators outsource block building to specialized "builders" who optimize for Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), and trusted relays mediate between them.
But the result is a centralization nightmare. Two builders — Beaverbuild and Titan — now control approximately 94% of all MEV-Boost blocks, with Beaverbuild alone holding roughly 50% market share. Six relays account for 99% of MEV-Boost block delivery. This is not a theoretical concern — it is a live, structural vulnerability in the world's most important smart contract platform.
The implications are severe:
Flashbots, the organization that built MEV-Boost, acknowledged the problem by launching BuilderNet in late 2024 — a decentralized block building network running on Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), jointly operated with Beaverbuild and Nethermind. But BuilderNet is an off-protocol patch. Glamsterdam aims to solve the problem at the protocol level.
The headline EIP of Glamsterdam, selected during All Core Developers Consensus Call #162, is EIP-7732 — enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS). This proposal moves the proposer-builder separation mechanism from the off-chain relay layer directly into Ethereum's consensus protocol.
Under ePBS, the block production pipeline becomes trustless at the protocol level:
This removes the relay bottleneck entirely. Block builders compete in an open, protocol-mediated market rather than through exclusive relationships with relay operators. The goal is not to eliminate MEV — that is likely impossible — but to ensure that MEV extraction is transparent, competitive, and censorship-resistant.
The second headliner is EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs). Despite the name, this has nothing to do with censorship — it is the key that unlocks parallel transaction execution on Ethereum mainnet.
Today, Ethereum processes transactions sequentially. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) cannot know which accounts or storage slots a transaction will touch until it executes, forcing a single-threaded pipeline. BALs change this by requiring blocks to include a pre-declared map of all accounts and storage slots that will be accessed during execution. With this information available upfront, nodes can:
The analogy is precise: Ethereum moves from a single-lane road to a multi-lane highway. Combined with the gas limit increase, BALs are the mechanism that makes 10,000 TPS a technical possibility rather than a marketing aspiration.
The third component is a comprehensive overhaul of Ethereum's gas pricing schedule. EIP-7904 adjusts gas costs for opcodes using actual client benchmark data — the first systematic repricing in years. Supporting proposals include:
These changes correct long-standing mispricing where some operations were dramatically over- or under-charged relative to their actual resource consumption. Proper repricing is a precondition for safely raising the gas limit — without it, an increased limit would expose the network to denial-of-service attacks exploiting underpriced opcodes.
The gas limit roadmap is perhaps Glamsterdam's most ambitious — and most contested — element.
Ethereum's block gas limit was raised from 45 million to 60 million in late 2025, following a year-long community campaign. Toni Wahrstätter, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, called it "a 2× increase in a single year — and it's only the beginning."
Tomasz Stanczak, then co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, outlined the next steps at the Bankless Summit:
| Timeline | Gas Limit Target | Prerequisite | |----------|-----------------|--------------| | H1 2026 | 100 million | Glamsterdam gas repricing + BALs | | Post-ePBS | 200 million | Enshrined PBS stabilization | | Late 2026 (aspirational) | 300 million | ZK proof verification integration |
Not everyone shares this optimism. Gary Schulte, senior staff blockchain protocol engineer on the Besu client team, offered a more measured assessment: "I think in 2026, I would expect to see 100 million fairly soon. Anything beyond that is probably just too speculative to consider."
The tension between ambition and engineering pragmatism will define Glamsterdam's trajectory. A 3.3× gas limit increase (60M → 200M) combined with parallel execution could deliver transformative throughput gains — but only if the client software, node operators, and validator infrastructure can handle the load without degrading decentralization.
Glamsterdam's throughput ambitions carry a hidden cost that has not received sufficient attention: validator centralization risk.
The upgrade's longer-term roadmap envisions transitioning from re-executing blocks to verifying ZK execution proofs. While this dramatically reduces computational requirements for validators, it introduces new centralization vectors:
Developers are currently stress-testing bals-devnet-2 and epbs-devnet-0 in Q1 2026, with public testnets planned for early-to-mid 2026. Two 30-day security audit windows are scheduled before any mainnet deployment. The end of February 2026 serves as a critical scope freeze deadline: if ePBS cannot achieve client interoperability by then, it may be deferred to the Hegota fork in H2 2026.
Glamsterdam enters its critical implementation phase amid significant organizational change at the Ethereum Foundation. Tomasz Stanczak, who drove the aggressive six-month upgrade cycle and the "LEAN Ethereum" operational philosophy, is stepping down as co-executive director at the end of February 2026 — less than a year after his appointment.
Stanczak's departure is notable because he was the architect of Ethereum's shift from long-horizon theorizing to rapid, disciplined delivery cycles. His warning — that "no amount of talking about Ethereum's roadmap and vision matters if we cannot achieve coordination levels that consistently meet goals on schedule" — now reads as both a legacy statement and a cautionary note for his successors.
Bastian Aue will succeed Stanczak, joining Hsiao-Wei Wang in leading the Foundation. Vitalik Buterin has praised Stanczak for "significantly enhancing the efficiency of multiple departments," but the question remains whether the operational discipline will survive the transition.
This leadership change does not directly threaten Glamsterdam's technical delivery — the EIPs are in the hands of client teams, not the Foundation. But the Foundation sets coordination cadence, manages testnet timelines, and arbitrates scope disputes. A stumble during the February scope freeze or testnet phase could cascade into delays.
Viewed through an economic value distribution lens, Glamsterdam reshapes three critical flows:
1. MEV redistribution: ePBS disintermediates relays and opens the builder market to broader competition. If successful, this should compress MEV margins for dominant builders and redistribute value toward validators and, potentially, end users through mechanisms like MEV burn or refund protocols.
2. L1 fee revenue recovery: By dramatically increasing L1 throughput, Glamsterdam creates the conditions for more economic activity to settle on Ethereum mainnet rather than migrating exclusively to Layer 2 networks. This directly addresses the "L2 value extraction" concern — that rollups capture user fees while contributing minimal value back to L1 validators.
3. Infrastructure cost repricing: Gas repricing and multidimensional metering create a more honest accounting of resource consumption. Protocols and users paying for storage, computation, and bandwidth separately can optimize their on-chain footprint more rationally, improving capital efficiency across the ecosystem.
The net effect, if Glamsterdam delivers, is an Ethereum L1 that recaptures economic gravity — a base layer powerful enough that "copypasta EVM chains," as Buterin put it, become unnecessary for most use cases.
Glamsterdam is not a routine protocol upgrade. It is Ethereum's attempt to solve, in a single fork, the three problems that have defined its post-Merge existence: relay-mediated centralization, sequential execution bottlenecks, and mispriced gas economics. The ambition is justified — the status quo, in which two builders control nearly all block production and the world's most important smart contract platform runs at 15–20 TPS, is not sustainable for a network aspiring to settle the global tokenized economy.
But ambition and delivery are different things. The scope freeze deadline at the end of February will reveal whether ePBS is truly ready for primetime or needs another six months of development. The testnet phase in Q1–Q2 2026 will test whether parallel execution holds up under adversarial conditions. And the Ethereum Foundation's ability to maintain coordination discipline through a leadership transition will determine whether the May/June target holds or slips.
For institutional participants, infrastructure operators, and protocol builders, Glamsterdam represents a binary outcome: either Ethereum emerges with a genuinely competitive L1 that recaptures economic gravity from its own L2 ecosystem, or it delivers a compromised partial upgrade that further erodes confidence in the network's execution capacity. The next four months will determine which scenario unfolds.