The Ethereum Foundation launched the Platåberget public testnet on August 17, 2026, opening the first community-facing testing phase for Glamsterdam — Ethereum's largest hard fork since The Merge. The Glamsterdam fork activates on Platåberget on August 20, 2026. Mainnet activation is targeted for...
"Any wallet, indexer, or gas estimator that hardcodes a maximum gas limit or assumes a single gas dimension will break." — Ethereum Foundation, Platåberget Testnet Announcement, August 17, 2026
The Ethereum Foundation launched the Platåberget public testnet on August 17, 2026, opening the first community-facing testing phase for Glamsterdam — Ethereum's largest hard fork since The Merge. The Glamsterdam fork activates on Platåberget on August 20, 2026. Mainnet activation is targeted for Q4 2026.
Glamsterdam ships 10 Ethereum Improvement Proposals under meta-EIP-7773. The two headliners are EIP-7732, which enshrines Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly into the consensus layer, and EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) enabling parallel transaction execution. Together, these changes target a gas limit increase from 60 million to 200 million per block — a 233% expansion — with throughput projections reaching 10,000 TPS and L1 fee reductions of approximately 78.6%.
The upgrade also carries material breaking changes. The Ethereum Foundation warned that the fixed 21,000 gas rule for ETH transfers, in place since the network's 2015 launch, will no longer hold for all transfer types. Transfers to new addresses will cost approximately 183,600 gas due to state creation fees under EIP-8037.
The Ethereum Foundation announced Platåberget on August 17, 2026. Unlike prior short-lived devnets, Platåberget is designed to run for several months, providing a stable environment for the community to experiment with post-Glamsterdam Ethereum before changes reach the longer-lived Sepolia and Hoodi testnets.
Platåberget starts in a state identical to mainnet and applies Glamsterdam's changes through a hard fork on August 20. This simulates the actual transition process that will occur on mainnet, allowing participants to run validators, deploy contracts, and stress-test the new gas model on a live chain.
The testing pipeline after Platåberget follows a defined sequence: a non-finality devnet in approximately one month to test consensus edge cases, followed by forks on Sepolia and Hoodi. Ethereum developers have not set a firm mainnet date, though multiple sources, including SSV Network, indicate Q4 2026 as the current target.
The delay from the original H1 2026 target reflects the scope of changes. According to BloomingBit, Ethereum developers pushed back the Glamsterdam mainnet activation from the first half of 2026 to Q4 after the final devnet phase revealed the need for additional testing.
Glamsterdam is tracked under meta-EIP-7773. The full list of included proposals:
| EIP | Name | Layer | |-----|------|-------| | 7732 | Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) | Consensus | | 7928 | Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) | Execution | | 7708 | ETH transfers and burns emit a log | Execution | | 7778 | Block gas accounting without refunds | Execution | | 7843 | SLOTNUM opcode | Execution | | 7954 | Raise max contract size (24 KiB → 64 KiB) | Execution | | 7975 | eth/70 partial block receipt lists | Networking | | 8024 | Backward-compatible SWAPN, DUPN, EXCHANGE opcodes | Execution | | 8037 | State-creation gas-cost increase | Execution | | 8159 | eth/71 Block Access List Exchange | Networking |
Two EIPs dominate the structural impact: EIP-7732 on the consensus side and EIP-7928 on execution. The remaining eight handle gas accounting, developer tooling, networking efficiency, and state cost adjustments.
EIP-7732 replaces the trusted off-chain relay system (MEV-Boost) that has mediated Ethereum block construction since The Merge. Under the current architecture, block proposers delegate construction to specialized builders through external relays — a system that works but introduces trust assumptions and centralization vectors.
ePBS moves this separation into the protocol itself. Proposers commit to a block header; a separate builder constructs the execution payload. The handoff occurs through in-protocol bids, commitments, and payments rather than through relay infrastructure.
According to researcher Luca Zanolini, the EIP "enshrines proposer-builder separation into Ethereum's consensus protocol, removing the need for the trusted relays that today's MEV pipeline depends on." Zanolini's team has conducted formal security analysis of ePBS, proving its security properties.
The practical impact: researchers estimate ePBS could reduce MEV extraction by up to 70%. For DeFi users, this translates to less value lost to sandwich attacks and front-running during trades, borrowing, and liquidity provision on the base layer.
Adoption of the new market is voluntary. Validators can opt into ePBS or continue using external infrastructure, though the protocol-level alternative removes the requirement to trust relay operators.
EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) — records included in every block that map every account and storage slot the block touches, along with post-execution state values.
The mechanism enables parallel transaction processing. By pre-declaring which state each transaction accesses, nodes can identify non-conflicting transactions and distribute them across multi-core CPUs for simultaneous execution. BALs also allow nodes to perform parallel disk reads, fetching information for many transactions at once rather than sequentially.
This is the technical foundation for Glamsterdam's gas limit increase from 60 million to 200 million per block. Without parallel execution, a 233% capacity increase would overwhelm sequential node processing. BALs make the higher throughput feasible by ensuring nodes can process larger blocks within the 12-second slot time.
Throughput projections from multiple sources, including BlockEden and Everstake, target 10,000 TPS with BALs active and the gas limit at 200 million. Current mainnet operates at roughly 15-30 TPS depending on transaction complexity.
Since Ethereum's launch in 2015, a simple ETH transfer has cost exactly 21,000 gas. Glamsterdam breaks this assumption.
EIP-7904 realigns gas costs with actual computational resource consumption. The result is an approximate 78.6% fee reduction for both simple transfers and complex smart contract interactions. According to estimates cited by Phemex, a Uniswap trade that currently costs $3-8 in gas could drop below $1.
EIP-8037 introduces a state-creation gas-cost increase. Transfers to existing accounts will still cost 21,000 gas. Transfers to new addresses — accounts that have never appeared on-chain — will incur an additional state gas fee of approximately 183,600 gas. The rationale: creating and permanently storing new state data imposes an ongoing cost on every full node.
EIP-7778 removes gas refunds from block gas accounting, simplifying the gas model but requiring tools that rely on refund calculations to update their logic.
The Ethereum Foundation's August 17 announcement explicitly warned developers: any wallet, indexer, or gas estimator that hardcodes a maximum gas limit or assumes a single-dimensional gas model will malfunction after Glamsterdam. Platåberget exists partly to surface these compatibility issues before mainnet activation.
Glamsterdam's calldata repricing directly affects Layer 2 rollups that post transaction data to Ethereum's base layer. Lower calldata costs reduce L2 settlement expenses, a cost that flows through to end-user transaction fees on networks including Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.
The higher gas limit also increases available block space for L2 data posting. With the gas limit moving from 60M to 200M, rollups can post larger batches or post more frequently without competing as aggressively for block space.
This continues a trend established by Dencun's EIP-4844 (proto-danksharding) in March 2024, which introduced blob transactions and reduced L2 fees by over 90% in some cases. Glamsterdam extends the cost reduction further, though the magnitude will depend on actual gas pricing dynamics post-upgrade.
The three L2 networks that currently control approximately 90% of rollup activity — per existing webthreepedia analysis — stand to benefit most from reduced settlement costs, potentially widening their cost advantage over smaller competitors.
According to Figment, Glamsterdam addresses two areas of specific interest to institutional stakers: block building architecture and validator exit mechanics.
EIP-8061 restructures exit and consolidation churn limits into separate lanes. Validator activations retain their existing capped limit. Exits are decoupled and scale with total staked ETH. Based on approximately 41.2 million ETH staked, the revised formula produces an exit churn limit of roughly 1,258 ETH per epoch — approximately 4.9x larger than the current limit. Consolidations process at roughly 2.4x current speed.
For institutional operators managing large staked positions, this means materially shorter wait times when exiting validators. Under current rules, large unstaking events can take weeks to process. The 4.9x increase in exit throughput addresses a liquidity concern that has been a persistent friction point for institutional allocators.
Figment reported a 2.82% average Staking Rewards Rate in Q2 2026, marginally above the 2.81% network average, with zero slashing events and 99.99% participation. The removal of MEV-Boost relay dependency through ePBS may alter reward dynamics for validators, though the voluntary adoption model means the transition will be gradual.
EIP-7954 raises the maximum deployed contract size from 24 KiB to 64 KiB and maximum initcode size from 48 KiB to 128 KiB. The 24 KiB limit, imposed by EIP-170 in 2016, has forced developers to split complex applications across multiple contracts using proxy patterns and delegate calls. The expanded limit allows more logic in a single deployment.
EIP-8024 adds backward-compatible SWAPN, DUPN, and EXCHANGE opcodes, extending the EVM's stack manipulation capabilities. EIP-7843 introduces a SLOTNUM opcode, giving smart contracts direct access to the current slot number.
EIP-7708 requires ETH transfers and burns to emit event logs, improving indexing and tracking for block explorers, analytics platforms, and accounting tools.
While Glamsterdam moves through testing, Ethereum developers are already scoping the follow-up upgrade: Hegotá, expected in 2027.
According to CoinDesk, 66 Ethereum Improvement Proposals are under consideration for Hegotá, with core developers planning to narrow the list by end of August 2026. Only one change has been confirmed so far: FOCIL, a censorship-resistance mechanism.
Among the candidates, several proposals aim to embed privacy support directly into the base protocol:
Hegotá also includes proposals for faster block production, greater L1 throughput, and stronger censorship resistance.
Glamsterdam is the most structurally significant Ethereum upgrade since The Merge in September 2022. The combination of enshrined PBS and parallel execution via BALs addresses two of the network's longest-standing constraints: block builder centralization and sequential transaction processing.
The economic implications are direct. Lower L1 fees reduce costs for every on-chain interaction. Reduced MEV extraction returns value to end users. Faster validator exits improve capital efficiency for institutional stakers. Larger contract sizes remove development workarounds that have added complexity and cost since 2016.
The Platåberget testnet provides the first public environment to validate these claims against real-world conditions. The next several months of testing will determine whether the 10-EIP package holds up under stress — and whether the Q4 2026 mainnet target is achievable or whether further delays are warranted.