Ethereum's Glamsterdam hard fork — a portmanteau of "Gloas" (consensus layer) and "Amsterdam" (execution layer) — entered final devnet testing on June 16, 2026, locking in ten Ethereum Improvement Proposals under meta-EIP 7773. Core developers describe it as the most significant protocol change s...
"This is probably the largest fork we've had since the Merge. It will change a lot of assumptions about Ethereum." — Parithosh Jayanthi, Core Developer, Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum's Glamsterdam hard fork — a portmanteau of "Gloas" (consensus layer) and "Amsterdam" (execution layer) — entered final devnet testing on June 16, 2026, locking in ten Ethereum Improvement Proposals under meta-EIP 7773. Core developers describe it as the most significant protocol change since the September 2022 Merge. Mainnet activation is targeted for H2 2026, with a realistic window of September to December based on the two-to-four-month public-testnet cadence of prior forks.
The upgrade ships two structural headliners: EIP-7732, which enshrines Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly in the consensus protocol, and EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) enabling parallel transaction execution. Together, the pair clears a path toward a 200-million-gas-per-block ceiling — roughly triple the current 60 million — and an estimated throughput of up to 10,000 TPS under realistic workloads. The move marks Ethereum's strategic pivot from a purely rollup-centric scaling philosophy back toward meaningful L1 capacity expansion, prompted by daily L1 fee revenue dropping from approximately $30 million in 2021–2022 to single-digit millions in 2026.
Glamsterdam is the direct successor to Fusaka, which shipped in December 2025. EIP-7773, the meta-specification governing the fork, remains in Draft status as of early July 2026. Ten EIPs are scheduled for inclusion:
| EIP | Category | Function | |-----|----------|----------| | 7732 | Consensus | Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) | | 7928 | Execution | Block-Level Access Lists (parallel execution) | | 2780 | Execution | Reduce intrinsic transaction gas | | 7708 | Execution | ETH transfers and burns emit logs | | 7778 | Execution | Block gas accounting without refunds | | 7843 | Execution | SLOTNUM opcode | | 7954 | Execution | Raise max contract size to 32 KiB | | 8024 | Execution | SWAPN, DUPN, EXCHANGE opcodes | | 8037 | Execution | State-creation gas cost increase | | 8061 | Consensus | Increase exit and consolidation churn |
The Soldøgn interop milestone concluded May 2, 2026. Final devnet testing began June 16. Public testnets Holesky and Hoodi must fork before mainnet. Some staking providers cite an optimistic internal target of Q3 2026; the base case is September to December 2026.
Since the Merge, Ethereum's block production has relied on MEV-Boost, an off-chain relay system that mediates between block proposers (validators) and block builders (specialized entities constructing transaction-ordered blocks). By 2026, over 88% of Ethereum blocks are constructed via MEV-Boost relays, according to Everstake data. This off-chain dependency introduces centralization risk: a small number of relay operators serve as trusted intermediaries with de facto censorship capability.
EIP-7732 moves the proposer-builder relationship into the consensus protocol itself. Builders become natively recognized participants. The block production pipeline shifts from a two-second data-propagation window to approximately nine seconds, and a new Payload Timeliness Committee (PTC) — a subset of validators — attests to whether the builder's payload arrived on time. If the builder fails to deliver, the proposer still collects the bid.
The economic implications are significant. Builders compete via on-chain auctions rather than opaque off-chain bids. Third-party relay infrastructure becomes unnecessary. According to Ethereum Foundation core developer Parithosh Jayanthi, the upgrade will "change a lot of assumptions about Ethereum," per CoinDesk reporting from June 16, 2026.
The expanded nine-second propagation window also has a secondary effect: it enables safely raising block capacity and accommodating more data blobs for Layer 2 networks in future upgrades.
EIP-7928 attaches upfront account and storage-key maps to each block, declaring which state locations will be accessed during execution. This pre-declaration enables three capabilities that are currently impossible:
Parallel disk reads. Validators can prefetch all required state in a single pass instead of discovering access patterns transaction-by-transaction.
Parallel transaction execution. Transactions touching non-overlapping state can be processed simultaneously. Under the current serial execution model, the EVM processes one transaction at a time regardless of whether two transactions interact with entirely different contracts.
Executionless sync. New nodes can reconstruct state from access lists without re-executing every transaction, reducing sync time.
According to research published on ethresear.ch, worst-case parallel execution under EIP-7928 has been modeled and found sustainable at the 200M gas target. Client teams including Besu, Geth, and Reth are prototyping implementations.
The combination of EIP-7732 and EIP-7928 is what unlocks the path to the 200-million gas-limit floor. Neither achieves it alone. ePBS provides the propagation-time headroom; BALs provide the execution-time compression.
The supporting EIP package addresses a long-standing misalignment between gas costs and actual resource consumption. As Jayanthi summarized: "High-level compute gets cheaper and state gets more expensive."
EIP-2780 reduces the base intrinsic cost of a transaction from 21,000 gas to 4,500 gas. A standard ETH transfer between existing accounts would cost approximately 6,000 gas — up to 71% cheaper than the current 21,000. However, the proposal introduces a GAS_NEW_ACCOUNT charge of 25,000 gas when a transfer targets an empty account, preserving the economic disincentive for state growth.
EIP-8037 ties state-creation costs to actual data size, setting a fixed cost per state byte and establishing a dedicated gas reservoir for state growth. This was the final piece, finalized in May 2026, that gave client teams confidence that a 200M gas limit would not bloat the state database past 120 GiB per year.
EIP-7954 raises the maximum deployable contract size from approximately 24 KiB to 32 KiB, addressing a constraint that has forced developers to split complex contracts across multiple deployments.
EIP-7778 removes gas refunds from block-level accounting, simplifying the gas model and eliminating a mechanism that has historically been exploited to manipulate block gas usage.
EIP-8024 introduces backward-compatible SWAPN, DUPN, and EXCHANGE opcodes, bringing Ethereum's EVM closer to feature parity with EOF (EVM Object Format) without requiring the full EOF overhaul.
ePBS does not uniformly reduce centralization. A January 2026 paper published on arXiv (2601.12989) develops a formal framework combining mathematical analysis and agent-based simulations to evaluate ePBS's auction mechanism. The findings identify a material tension.
Under standard Proof-of-Stake without ePBS, the Gini coefficient for validator profit distribution is 0.1749 — relatively egalitarian. Under ePBS, the profit Gini coefficient rises to 0.8358. The paper states that "a small number of efficient builders capture most value via MEV-driven auctions." The highest-valuation builder wins 97% of blocks across 1,000 simulated rounds.
At the same time, 95.4% of total block value accrues to proposers despite their reduced role in block assembly. This creates an economic structure where proposers receive nearly all revenue but builders perform nearly all work — a dynamic that could entrench a small set of sophisticated builders.
The Ethereum Foundation has acknowledged this trade-off. The argument for proceeding is that ePBS replaces an already centralized off-chain system (MEV-Boost relays) with a transparent, protocol-level alternative. The centralization moves from opaque relay operators to visible, auditable auction dynamics. Whether that constitutes progress depends on whether one weights transparency above distribution.
Glamsterdam's effects on Layer 2 economics are indirect but meaningful.
The calldata repricing EIPs included in the package reduce the gas cost of posting data to L1. For rollups that still rely on calldata rather than blobs (introduced in EIP-4844/Dencun), settlement expenses decline, flowing through to lower end-user fees on Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync.
The expanded ePBS propagation window — from two seconds to nine — creates headroom for future blob capacity increases. While Glamsterdam itself does not ship additional blob scaling (that was primarily a Fusaka/PeerDAS outcome), it removes a propagation bottleneck that would have constrained future blob-per-block increases.
Strategically, Glamsterdam represents a recalibration. Ethereum's 2023–2025 roadmap prioritized rollup economics. Daily L1 fees declined as activity migrated to L2s. The result: L1 value accrual weakened. By tripling L1 throughput capacity, Glamsterdam aims to make L1 execution competitive enough to retain economic activity that would otherwise settle exclusively on rollups.
This does not reverse the rollup-centric thesis. It supplements it with a viable L1 scaling path. The economic question is whether cheaper L1 gas increases total L1 fee revenue through volume effects, or merely reduces per-transaction costs with no compensating volume growth. That data will not be available until months after mainnet activation.
Two Glamsterdam EIPs directly affect staking operations.
EIP-8061 revises the exit churn limit formula to scale with total staked ETH. Based on approximately 38.9 million ETH currently staked, the revised formula produces an exit churn limit of roughly 1,187 ETH per epoch, according to Figment's May 2026 analysis. For institutional operators managing large positions, this translates to significantly faster exit processing — what previously required weeks could clear in days.
EIP-8080 allows exits to use the consolidation queue, providing a secondary pathway for validators seeking to withdraw. Combined with EIP-8061, these changes address one of the primary operational risks cited by institutional stakers: time-to-liquidity during position adjustments.
Validator operations require updates to both consensus-layer and execution-layer clients. Node operators must monitor IOPS capacity for parallel execution under EIP-7928. Figment's Q1 2026 validator report shows a network average staking reward rate of 2.91%, with 99.9% participation rates across their validator set and zero double-sign slashing events.
Two proposals considered for Glamsterdam were removed from scope:
EIP-7782 (6-second slots) would have halved Ethereum's block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. It was shelved due to conflicts with zero-knowledge proving timelines — ZK provers cannot currently generate proofs fast enough for 6-second slots without hardware assumptions the Foundation considers premature.
FOCIL (Fork-Choice Inclusion Lists) would have required proposers to include a minimum set of pending transactions, reducing censorship risk. It was moved to Hegotá, the upgrade following Glamsterdam, tentatively targeted for Q4 2026 or Q1 2027.
The deferral of FOCIL is notable given the centralization concerns raised by the ePBS research. Without inclusion lists, builders retain full discretion over transaction ordering and censorship within their blocks. The Foundation's position is that ePBS and FOCIL are complementary but that shipping ePBS first establishes the protocol infrastructure FOCIL requires.
Glamsterdam is Ethereum's attempt to resolve a structural contradiction: a network whose roadmap prioritized Layer 2 scaling while its own base layer lost economic relevance. Daily L1 fee revenue fell from $30 million to single-digit millions over four years. The response is a comprehensive L1 capacity expansion — parallel execution, gas repricing, and protocol-level block production — that triples throughput ceiling without altering the 12-second slot time.
The upgrade carries measurable risk. ePBS introduces builder-level centralization that academic models quantify as severe (Gini 0.84). The deferral of FOCIL leaves censorship mitigation one upgrade cycle behind. Whether the transparency of on-chain auctions constitutes an improvement over opaque relay infrastructure is an empirical question that will be answered by post-activation data.
For economic value distribution across Ethereum's ecosystem, Glamsterdam restructures who captures value from block production and how. Proposers retain 95.4% of block value. Builders absorb execution complexity. Relay operators lose their intermediary position entirely. The economic architecture of Ethereum's supply chain is being rewritten — in public, on-chain, with auditable auction mechanics. Whether that produces better outcomes than the current system is not yet known. But the current system's centralization was never the intended design. Glamsterdam, at minimum, makes it the protocol's explicit choice rather than an emergent accident.