Ethereum's next hard fork — codenamed Glamsterdam — is shaping up to be the most consequential protocol upgrade since The Merge. Scheduled for H1 2026 with a tentative June target, Glamsterdam bundles over 25 Ethereum Improvement Proposals around two headliner changes: EIP-7732 (Enshrined Propose...
"2026 is the year that we take back lost ground in terms of self-sovereignty and trustlessness." — Vitalik Buterin, Co-Founder of Ethereum
Ethereum's next hard fork — codenamed Glamsterdam — is shaping up to be the most consequential protocol upgrade since The Merge. Scheduled for H1 2026 with a tentative June target, Glamsterdam bundles over 25 Ethereum Improvement Proposals around two headliner changes: EIP-7732 (Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation) and EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists). Together, they promise a 78.6% reduction in gas fees, up to 70% reduction in MEV extraction, and the foundation for parallel transaction execution — fundamentally reshaping the economics of Ethereum's base layer.
The timing is deliberate. Ethereum spent 2024 and 2025 ceding execution to Layer 2s that collectively process over 90% of ecosystem transactions. Only 2 of more than 50 major L2s reached Stage 2 decentralization by early 2026. Block building has concentrated into the hands of just two dominant builders. Vitalik Buterin has publicly warned that this centralization threatens the network's censorship-resistance guarantees. Glamsterdam is Ethereum's answer: reclaim the base layer by making it fast enough, cheap enough, and fair enough that users and capital come back.
But the upgrade carries real execution risk. Its scope is larger than Pectra and Fusaka combined. The interplay between ePBS and Block-Level Access Lists introduces complexity that hasn't been tested at mainnet scale. And if Glamsterdam slips to Q3 or Q4, the window for the follow-up Hegotá fork narrows dangerously. The stakes — technical, economic, and ideological — have never been higher.
Ethereum entered 2026 in an uncomfortable position. ETH was trading below $2,000 even as the broader crypto market showed signs of recovery. The narrative had shifted: Solana was processing more daily transactions, L2s were capturing the majority of user activity, and Ethereum's base layer looked increasingly like expensive settlement infrastructure rather than a thriving execution environment.
The Ethereum Foundation's February 2026 Protocol Priorities Update laid out the response. Organized into three tracks — Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1 — the roadmap placed Glamsterdam at the center of the Scale track. The explicit goal: push the gas limit "toward and beyond" 100 million, implement enshrined proposer-builder separation, and enable parallel execution through Block-Level Access Lists.
This isn't incremental improvement. The Ethereum Foundation formed a new Platform team in February 2026 with a mandate to align L1 and L2 so that users interact with Ethereum as a single, integrated platform. Glamsterdam provides the technical foundation for that vision.
Today, Ethereum's block-building process relies on an out-of-protocol system called MEV-Boost, operated by third-party relays. Validators (proposers) outsource block construction to specialized builders through these relays. The system works, but it introduces trust assumptions and centralization vectors that the protocol was designed to avoid.
EIP-7732 moves the entire process on-chain. Under ePBS, the proposer and builder roles are formally separated at the protocol level. The proposer commits to a block header; a separate builder constructs the execution payload. No external relay needed. No trust in third parties. The block-building logic becomes part of Ethereum itself.
The economic implications are profound. MEV-Boost relays — operated primarily by Flashbots, BloXroute, and Blocknative — currently mediate billions of dollars in block construction. Enshrining PBS eliminates their privileged position while preserving the competitive builder marketplace. Researchers estimate ePBS could reduce MEV extraction by up to 70%, translating to fairer execution for anyone trading, borrowing, or providing liquidity on Ethereum's base layer.
If ePBS restructures who builds blocks, BALs restructure how blocks are executed. Today, Ethereum processes transactions sequentially — each transaction must complete before the next begins, because the EVM cannot know in advance which storage slots a transaction will touch. This is the single largest bottleneck to throughput.
EIP-7928 solves this by requiring blocks to include an explicit list of all accounts and storage locations that will be accessed during execution, along with their post-execution values. With this information declared upfront, clients can safely execute transactions in parallel.
The research data is encouraging: 60–80% of Ethereum transactions access disjoint storage slots, meaning they can be parallelized immediately. The remaining 20–40% can still benefit from knowing post-transaction state diffs. Average overhead is approximately 35 KiB per block at 36M gas — well within acceptable limits.
BALs don't just speed up execution. They enable parallel disk reads, parallel state root computation, and even "executionless" state updates where nodes can verify blocks without re-executing every transaction. This is the infrastructure that makes a 200M gas limit technically feasible rather than aspirational.
Maximal Extractable Value has been Ethereum's original sin since DeFi's explosion. In 2025 alone, sandwich attacks constituted $289.76 million — 51.56% of the total $561.92 million in MEV transaction volume. Between December 2025 and January 2026, MEV extractors pulled nearly $24 million from Ethereum users in just 30 days.
The current architecture amplifies the problem. By August 2024, just two builders had come to dominate the MEV builder market. As Vitalik Buterin wrote in March 2026: "Block building became more centralized, putting Ethereum transaction inclusion guarantees under the whims of a very small number of builders."
Glamsterdam attacks this on multiple fronts:
The 70% MEV reduction estimate comes with caveats — sophisticated actors will adapt — but even a 50% reduction would return hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Ethereum users who currently lose value to extraction.
Ethereum's gas limit journey in 2026 tells the story of a network fighting to reclaim throughput:
| Milestone | Gas Limit | Status | |-----------|-----------|--------| | Pre-2026 baseline | 36M | Completed | | January 2026 increase | 60M | Active | | Glamsterdam target (H1) | 100M+ | In testing | | Year-end consensus target | 180M | Planned | | Aspirational ceiling | 200M | Under research |
The Ethereum Foundation officially targets "toward and beyond" 100 million. But the developer community's consensus is more aggressive: educator Anthony Sassano has stated that 180 million is the baseline target for 2026, not the best-case scenario.
BALs make this possible. Without parallel execution, raising the gas limit simply means nodes need more time to process each block, increasing centralization pressure. With BALs, the computational cost of block verification drops even as the gas limit rises. The Ethereum Foundation's benchmarking shows that worst-case parallel execution under EIP-7928 remains manageable even at 200M gas, with worst-case BAL sizes staying below calldata worst-case sizes.
The projected 78.6% gas fee reduction compounds with the gas limit increase. A simple ETH transfer that costs $2.50 today could cost under $0.55 post-Glamsterdam. Complex DeFi interactions that currently run $15–30 could drop to $3–7. At these price points, L1 Ethereum becomes cost-competitive with many L2s — fundamentally changing the calculus for users and developers.
Glamsterdam creates a strategic tension at the heart of Ethereum's scaling roadmap. The network spent three years pushing activity to L2s. Now, it's making L1 competitive again. The question is whether this complements or cannibalizes the rollup ecosystem.
The data suggests both. Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism currently process approximately 90% of all L2 transactions. They captured users partly because L1 gas was too expensive and partly because MEV on L1 punished retail traders. If Glamsterdam delivers on its promises, some of that activity will inevitably flow back to the base layer, which carries a higher security guarantee than any rollup.
Vitalik Buterin himself acknowledged this shift in February 2026, posting that Layer 2 solutions have decentralized slower than expected and prompting reconsideration of direct L1 scaling. The new Platform team's mandate — combining L1's settlement security with L2's throughput — signals that the Foundation sees the future as integration, not separation.
For L2s, this isn't necessarily existential. Rollups that have built genuine network effects, unique execution environments, or specialized use cases will retain their moats. But generic "copy-paste EVM chains" — the proliferation Buterin publicly criticized in February when he said "We don't friggin need more copypasta EVM chains" — face existential pressure from a base layer that can now match their performance at higher security.
As of mid-March 2026, Glamsterdam's development status is:
Risk factors:
The Ethereum Foundation has signaled flexibility: developers emphasized that "hitting the date is secondary to getting the upgrade right." Given the on-time delivery of Pectra (May 2025) and Fusaka, the team has earned credibility — but Glamsterdam's scope is materially larger.
Glamsterdam represents Ethereum's ideological and economic reset. After years of ceding ground to L2s, alt-L1s, and centralized builders, the network is reclaiming its base layer as a first-class execution environment. The technical architecture is sound: ePBS eliminates the trust assumptions of off-chain relays, BALs unlock parallel execution that has eluded Ethereum since genesis, and the gas limit roadmap charts a credible path to 10x throughput.
But the upgrade is also a test of Ethereum's governance and execution capacity. Twenty-five EIPs across consensus and execution layers, tested across multiple devnets and client implementations, deployed to a network securing hundreds of billions in value — the margin for error is thin. If Glamsterdam ships on time and performs as designed, it will validate Ethereum's ability to evolve at the speed its competitors demand. If it slips or underperforms, it will reinforce the narrative that Ethereum's base layer is permanently outclassed.
The economic value at stake is enormous. Between MEV reduction, gas fee compression, and the potential repatriation of L2 activity, Glamsterdam could redistribute billions of dollars in annual value from extractors and intermediaries back to users. That's not just a protocol upgrade — it's an economic realignment. And for an ecosystem that has always claimed to put users first, it may be the most important upgrade Ethereum has ever shipped.