Ethereum's Glamsterdam hard fork — described by core developers as the largest protocol overhaul since the 2022 Merge — entered its final development phase on June 16, 2026. Developer networks now run the complete suite of Ethereum Improvement Proposals slated for inclusion. Public testnets follo...
"We're working on devnets with all the EIPs in them right now. This is the last phase before we work on hardening and then shipping the testnets." — Parithosh Jayanthi, Core Developer, Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum's Glamsterdam hard fork — described by core developers as the largest protocol overhaul since the 2022 Merge — entered its final development phase on June 16, 2026. Developer networks now run the complete suite of Ethereum Improvement Proposals slated for inclusion. Public testnets follow next, with mainnet activation targeted for late August 2026, though Q3 remains the official window.
The upgrade bundles three headline changes: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) via EIP-7732, which moves block construction on-chain and eliminates dependency on third-party relay infrastructure; Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) via EIP-7928, which enables parallel transaction execution; and a comprehensive gas repricing package via EIP-7904, EIP-8037, and EIP-8038. Together, these changes raise the block gas limit floor from 60 million to 200 million — roughly 3.3x current capacity — targeting approximately 10,000 transactions per second on the base layer, up from an effective rate of roughly 1,000 TPS today.
The economic implications are substantial. Compute-heavy operations become cheaper (ETH transfer costs drop an estimated 71%), while state-creation operations become 8–10x more expensive to cap database growth at 60–100 GiB per year. The repricing redistributes costs in a way that penalizes state bloat while rewarding execution efficiency. For the 1.24 million active validators staking 39.7 million ETH, the shift from off-chain MEV-Boost relays to enshrined proposer-builder separation restructures a supply chain that currently routes 93% of blocks through just four relays, with 95.7% of block-building controlled by two entities.
The Soldøgn interop devnet concluded on May 2, 2026, producing a stable multi-client Glamsterdam developer network. As of June 16, developers confirmed they are running devnets containing the full EIP suite. According to Parithosh Jayanthi, an Ethereum Foundation core developer, the current phase focuses on specification finalization, cross-client testing, and community outreach regarding gas repricing implications.
The Ethereum Foundation has set a 200 million gas limit floor as a "credible post-Glamsterdam target," more than triple the current 60 million ceiling. The original June 2026 mainnet target has slipped to Q3, with late August 2026 as the internal working date. Three factors could push activation into Q4: ePBS implementation complexity across multiple client teams, cross-client implementation parity, and gas repricing parametrization.
The development sequence from here: current devnet stabilization → public testnets (Sepolia and Hoodi) → mainnet activation. No firm mainnet date has been announced.
Following Glamsterdam, Ethereum's roadmap shifts to the Hegotá scalability track, with the Heze-Bogota upgrade tentatively scheduled for late 2026 or early 2027.
The problem. Since the Merge, Ethereum's block production has relied on MEV-Boost, an off-chain system where block builders assemble transaction bundles and validators select the highest-paying block. The system works, but it concentrates power: 93% of Ethereum blocks in recent 14-day windows used MEV-Boost. Only four relays remain active on the network. Two builders control 95.7% of the MEV-Boost market. This level of concentration in critical infrastructure creates censorship risks, single points of failure, and trust assumptions that the protocol layer was designed to eliminate.
The fix. EIP-7732 moves the proposer-builder handoff directly into the Ethereum consensus protocol. Under ePBS, builders cryptographically seal their blocks and commit to a bid. Validators select the highest bid without seeing transaction contents. The block is revealed only after the commitment is locked in. This trustless exchange of block payload for payment, enforced by the protocol itself, removes the need for third-party middleware.
New infrastructure: Payload Timeliness Committee (PTC). Validators take on a new duty — joining the PTC to verify that builders reveal block contents on time. Block propagation windows expand from approximately 2 seconds to roughly 9 seconds under the new design.
MEV impact. Researchers estimate ePBS could reduce MEV extraction by up to 70%. For users executing swaps, providing liquidity, or interacting with lending protocols, this translates to less value lost to sandwich attacks and frontrunning. The reduction stems from the structural separation: builders can no longer manipulate inclusion timing once commitments are locked.
Relay obsolescence. The four remaining MEV-Boost relays — which currently serve as trusted intermediaries — become structurally unnecessary. The relay layer does not disappear overnight; builders and validators may continue using off-chain coordination channels. But the protocol no longer depends on them, removing a centralization bottleneck that has concerned researchers since 2023.
The problem. Ethereum processes transactions sequentially. Each transaction in a block executes one after another because the EVM cannot know in advance which state a transaction will touch. This serial execution model caps throughput regardless of available hardware.
The fix. EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) — enforced, block-wide declarations of every account touched and every state change (storage keys, balances, nonces, code) during execution. By declaring state access upfront, the network can pre-fetch data from disk and execute non-conflicting transactions in parallel.
The result. Disk I/O, EVM execution, and post-state root calculations become fully parallelizable for transactions that touch different state. This cuts worst-case block validation latency and is the primary mechanism enabling the 200 million gas limit target. Combined with ePBS, developers project throughput scaling toward 10,000 TPS on the base layer.
Supporting protocol: EIP-8159 (eth/71). A companion proposal enables peer-to-peer sharing of Block Access Lists between nodes, ensuring all clients can validate blocks efficiently under the new parallel execution model.
Research caveat. An Ethereum Research paper titled "Modeling the Worst-Case Parallel Execution under EIP-7928" examines adversarial scenarios where transactions deliberately overlap state access to force sequential fallback. Worst-case throughput remains above current levels but falls short of the 10,000 TPS target. Real-world workloads, where most transactions touch distinct state, are expected to approach the upper bound.
The gas repricing package is the most user-facing change in Glamsterdam. It fundamentally restructures what costs more and what costs less on Ethereum.
EIP-7904: Benchmarked Gas Repricing. Many gas prices were set years ago and no longer reflect execution costs on modern hardware. EIP-7904 realigns gas costs with actual computational resources consumed. The recalibration produces a 78.6% reduction for simple ETH transfers and comparable savings for complex smart contract interactions. A Uniswap trade that currently costs $3–$8 in gas is projected to drop below $1. Complex DeFi operations involving multiple contract calls would see proportionally larger savings.
EIP-2780: ETH Transfer Gas Reduction. Specifically reduces the cost of basic ETH transfers by up to 71%. With current gas prices averaging 8.77 gwei (as of June 2026, per Etherscan), the combined effect of EIP-7904 and EIP-2780 pushes simple transfer costs toward fractions of a cent.
EIP-8037: State Creation Gas Increase. This is the counterweight. EIP-8037 introduces a dynamic pricing model that increases the gas cost of state-creation operations, making new accounts and state-heavy contracts 8–10x more expensive. The target: cap state database growth at 60–100 GiB per year, ensuring standard physical hardware can continue running full nodes. The proposal reached final draft status and is now parameterized in the bal-devnet-6 test network.
EIP-8038: State Access Gas Updates. Adjusts gas costs for state-access operations (reading existing state, as opposed to creating new state) to reflect modern hardware performance characteristics. Storage reads become cheaper; storage writes remain priced to discourage bloat.
The net effect. Compute becomes cheaper. Storage becomes more expensive. This is a deliberate policy choice: Ethereum is pricing in the long-term cost of state that must be maintained by every full node indefinitely, while reducing the cost of transient computation that imposes no permanent burden on the network.
Glamsterdam includes over 25 non-headliner EIPs under consideration. Several have reached devnet inclusion:
| EIP | Function | |------|----------| | EIP-8045 | Excludes slashed validators from block proposal duties | | EIP-8080 | Democratizes consolidation queue access for all staking exits | | EIP-7997 | Deterministic Factory Predeploy — enables identical smart contract addresses across EVM chains | | EIP-7708 | Mandatory logging for ETH transfers and burns | | EIP-7975 (eth/70) | Paginated block receipt lists to prevent sync failures |
EIP-7997 is notable for cross-chain development: deploying a contract to the same address on every EVM-compatible chain simplifies multi-chain application architecture. EIP-8080 addresses a validator experience issue from Pectra, where the consolidation queue mechanism for exiting validators was not uniformly accessible.
As of June 15, 2026, Ethereum has 1,239,795 active validators staking 39.67 million ETH — roughly one-third of circulating supply. The validator entry queue holds a backlog above 3.5 million ETH with a 62-day wait, while the exit queue sits at zero. Base staking yields remain near 2.7% annually, with MEV-Boost adding 10–30% on top.
Glamsterdam restructures the validator value chain in several ways:
PTC duties. Validators gain a new responsibility: participating in the Payload Timeliness Committee to verify builder block reveals. This increases operational complexity but removes reliance on trust-based relay infrastructure.
MEV redistribution. If ePBS reduces MEV extraction by the estimated 70%, the MEV component of validator revenue declines. However, this reduction represents value currently extracted from users. The redistribution benefits transaction originators at the expense of sophisticated MEV searchers.
Hardware requirements. Parallel execution via BALs increases disk I/O demands for block validation. Validators running minimum-spec hardware may need to upgrade. Conversely, the gas repricing package reduces compute loads, partially offsetting hardware pressure.
Consolidation queue (EIP-8080). Validators seeking to exit or consolidate stakes gain more uniform access to the queue mechanism, addressing complaints from the Pectra era.
Implementation delay. Cross-client parity for ePBS is complex. Five execution clients and five consensus clients must implement the same specification identically. Slippage from Q3 to Q4 2026 is a realistic scenario.
Gas repricing disruption. Making state creation 8–10x more expensive changes the economic calculus for deploying new contracts. Protocols that create many new accounts or storage slots — including some NFT platforms, gaming chains, and account-abstraction wallets — face higher deployment costs. The Ethereum Foundation is conducting community outreach to prepare projects for repricing impacts.
Parallel execution edge cases. Adversarial workloads designed to maximize state overlap can force sequential execution fallback, negating throughput gains. Research indicates this is unlikely under normal conditions but represents a potential griefing vector.
MEV-Boost transition risk. The shift from off-chain relays to enshrined PBS does not occur instantaneously. A transition period where both systems coexist introduces complexity. Validators and builders must update software, and coordination mechanisms need time to stabilize.
State growth calibration. EIP-8037's target of 60–100 GiB/year is a policy parameter, not a physical constraint. If set too aggressively, it could price out legitimate use cases. If too permissive, state growth continues to pressure node operators.
Glamsterdam represents Ethereum's most structurally significant upgrade since the Merge. Where Pectra (May 2025) expanded validator mechanics and blob throughput, Glamsterdam rewires the block production supply chain and introduces parallel execution to the base layer.
The economic logic is straightforward: compute becomes cheaper, state becomes more expensive, and the intermediary layer between validators and builders gets absorbed into the protocol. The 200 million gas limit target — if achieved — positions Ethereum's L1 as a higher-throughput settlement layer, reducing the urgency argument for some L2 use cases while increasing the economic density of base-layer transactions.
The upgrade does not solve all of Ethereum's scaling challenges. The 10,000 TPS figure is a target, not a guarantee, and adversarial workloads can reduce effective throughput. The MEV reduction estimate of 70% depends on builder behavior adapting to the new mechanism. And the gas repricing package will inevitably create winners (compute-heavy DeFi operations) and losers (state-heavy deployment patterns).
What Glamsterdam does accomplish, if delivered on schedule, is the removal of a trust-based intermediary layer from Ethereum's block production pipeline, the introduction of hardware-native parallelism to transaction processing, and a gas pricing model that reflects the actual costs imposed on the network. These are infrastructure-level changes. Their effects compound over time.