Ethereum's next hard fork, code-named Glamsterdam (Gloas + Amsterdam), is targeted for mid-2026 and constitutes the network's most structurally significant protocol change since The Merge in September 2022. The upgrade centers on two headliner EIPs: EIP-7732, which enshrines Proposer-Builder Sepa...
"In Glamsterdam, Ethereum is getting ePBS, which lets proposers outsource to a free permissionless market of block builders. This ensures that block builder centralization does not creep into staking centralization." — Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Co-Founder (March 2, 2026)
Ethereum's next hard fork, code-named Glamsterdam (Gloas + Amsterdam), is targeted for mid-2026 and constitutes the network's most structurally significant protocol change since The Merge in September 2022. The upgrade centers on two headliner EIPs: EIP-7732, which enshrines Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly into the consensus layer, and EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs) to enable parallel transaction execution.
The combined effect targets a roughly 3.3x increase in the block gas limit — from 60 million to approximately 200 million — while repricing gas costs to reflect actual computational overhead on modern hardware. Benchmarks conducted by the Ethereum Foundation's Gas Cost Estimator project indicate a 78.6% reduction in effective gas costs for standard operations under EIP-7904. If delivered as scoped, Glamsterdam would push Ethereum L1 throughput from roughly 1,000 TPS to an estimated 10,000 TPS while simultaneously dismantling the relay-dependent MEV infrastructure that currently routes approximately 64% of all block space through a single intermediary.
DevNet 2 was reported as progressing well at the All Core Devs Execution (ACDE) Call #233 on March 26, 2026, with DevNet 3 launch planned for the following week. Public testnet activations on Holesky and Sepolia are expected in the months preceding mainnet deployment.
Ethereum's block-building pipeline is concentrated to a degree that presents systemic risk. Two builders — Beaver Build and Titan — construct over 90% of Ethereum's blocks. The relay layer is similarly concentrated: Flashbots relays approximately 80% of all MEV-Boost blocks. Since MEV-Boost is used by roughly 80% of validators, Flashbots controls access to an estimated 64% of total Ethereum block space.
This architecture relies on out-of-protocol infrastructure. MEV-Boost, built and maintained by Flashbots, is not part of Ethereum's consensus specification. Validators trust relays to faithfully pass block headers and payloads between proposers and builders. A relay failure or compromise could disrupt block production across the majority of the network.
MEV extraction itself has scaled materially. Data from EigenPhi and blockchain analytics firms place annual MEV extraction on Ethereum above $3 billion. Between December 8, 2025 and January 6, 2026, extractors pulled approximately $24 million in profit on Ethereum alone over a 30-day period. Sandwich attacks, frontrunning, and arbitrage collectively impose a tax on every user interacting with DeFi on Ethereum's base layer.
The economic incentive structure is self-reinforcing. Builders with exclusive order flow agreements outbid competitors, expand their bidding reservoir, and attract more flow. This creates winner-take-most dynamics that the current out-of-protocol architecture cannot address.
EIP-7732 moves the proposer-builder separation mechanism directly into Ethereum's consensus layer. Under the current MEV-Boost system, proposers delegate block construction to external builders through off-chain relays. Under ePBS, the protocol itself mediates this relationship.
Mechanism. The proposer commits to a block header. A separate builder constructs the execution payload. The protocol enforces this split natively — no external relay required, no trust in third-party infrastructure. Block-building logic becomes part of Ethereum's consensus rules.
MEV impact. Researchers estimate ePBS could reduce MEV extraction by up to 70%, translating to lower costs for anyone trading, borrowing, or providing liquidity on Ethereum L1. The mechanism creates a permissionless builder market accessible to any party, rather than one gated by relay relationships and order flow agreements.
Limitation acknowledged. Buterin himself flagged that ePBS addresses the staking-centralization vector but does not resolve builder-centralization risk. Two proposed follow-on mechanisms target this gap: FOCIL (Forward Obligatory Commitment to Inclusion Lists), where 16 randomly selected attesters mandate that all qualifying transactions make it into a block, and encrypted mempools that hide transaction data until block finalization, eliminating frontrunning windows.
The ePBS implementation also removes timing-game penalties for late validation — a structural prerequisite for the ZK-proof validation model that approximately 10% of validators are expected to adopt during 2026, according to Ethereum researcher Justin Drake.
EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs): a record of accounts and storage slots accessed during each block's execution. The mechanism allows clients to pre-fetch data and identify non-overlapping transactions, enabling safe parallel execution across multiple CPU cores.
Performance benchmarks. At ACDE #233, developer Marius presented results from the Benchmark Core tool showing a roughly 3x improvement through BALs on most compute tests against a baseline target of 60 megabits per second for compute and state operations.
Throughput projection. Combined with the gas limit increase from 60 million to approximately 200 million, BALs provide the execution intelligence to utilize that expanded capacity. The target throughput is approximately 10,000 TPS on Ethereum's base layer, up from an effective rate of roughly 1,000 TPS today.
Ethereum currently processes transactions sequentially. BALs break this constraint by mapping transaction dependencies before execution begins, allowing nodes to run independent transactions simultaneously. This is architecturally similar to the parallel execution models deployed by Solana and Monad, though implemented through an access-list approach rather than optimistic concurrency.
Glamsterdam bundles a comprehensive gas repricing package under the umbrella of EIP-8007. The repricing is grounded in empirical benchmarks conducted across seven EVM implementations by the Gas Cost Estimator project, which measured actual computational cost per opcode on modern hardware.
Key proposals in the package:
| EIP | Scope | Effect | |-----|-------|--------| | EIP-7904 | General opcode repricing | 78.6% gas cost reduction for standard operations | | EIP-7667 | Hashing operations | Updated costs for ZK-VM compatibility | | EIP-7923 | Memory model | Paged memory replaces quadratic growth | | EIP-8032 | SSTORE operations | Depth-based pricing | | EIP-8037 | State creation | 10x cost increase to curb state bloat | | EIP-8038 | SLOAD/SSTORE | Constant adjustments | | EIP-7981 | Access lists | Base floor cost established | | EIP-7976 | Calldata | Increased costs to reduce spam | | EIP-2780 | Intrinsic gas | Reduced from 21,000 to 4,500 per transaction | | EIP-7778 | Refund accounting | Removes refunds from block limit calculations |
According to developer Butta's survey of 21 entities at ACDE #233, most concerns focused on complexity rather than price increases. Marius noted that 6.8 million existing transactions would be affected, primarily arbitrage bots and ephemeral contracts — precisely the transaction types that contribute to state bloat and MEV extraction.
User impact. A Uniswap trade currently costing $3–$8 in gas could drop below $1 post-Glamsterdam. Complex multi-contract DeFi operations would see proportionally larger reductions.
As of the March 26, 2026 ACDE call, the upgrade has progressed through the following stages:
The upgrade scope is fully defined. The two headliner EIPs (7732 and 7928) are locked. Over 25 additional EIPs remain under evaluation, with final inclusion decisions pending headliner stability.
Hegotá. Ethereum core developers have already named the post-Glamsterdam upgrade "Hegotá" (Heze-Bogotá), targeting late 2026. At ACDE #233, frame transactions — an account abstraction mechanism championed by Vitalik — were rejected as a Hegotá headliner due to insufficient client support. Chris from the Base team indicated plans to ship an alternative solution.
Glamsterdam's L1 changes have direct implications for Ethereum's rollup ecosystem. Base, Coinbase's L2, published a detailed endorsement of six non-headliner Glamsterdam EIPs, narrowed from nearly 50 proposals. The endorsed EIPs fall into three categories: blob scaling, gas repricing, and builder UX improvements.
Gas mispricing as L2 bottleneck. According to Base's engineering blog, gas mispricings are "one of the biggest issues for scaling Base," because execution client performance is bottlenecked by blocks containing mispriced opcodes. EIP-7904's repricing directly addresses this constraint.
Specific L2-relevant EIPs:
The gas limit increase from 60 million to 200 million also expands blob capacity for rollup data availability. Following Fusaka's PeerDAS implementation in December 2025 — which increased blob slots from 6 to 48 per block — Glamsterdam's higher gas ceiling provides additional headroom for rollup data posting.
Current Ethereum L2 aggregate throughput exceeds 31,000 TPS. Glamsterdam strengthens the settlement layer these rollups depend on, rather than replacing them.
Builder centralization persists. ePBS prevents builder concentration from leaking into validator concentration, but does not prevent builder monopolization itself. FOCIL and encrypted mempools are proposed as follow-on solutions, but neither is included in Glamsterdam's scope.
State bloat trade-offs. The 3.3x gas limit increase and 78% gas cost reduction create conditions for rapid state growth. EIP-8037's 10x increase in state creation costs is designed as a counterbalance, but the net effect on state size growth remains to be validated under production load.
Validator hardware requirements. Parallel execution and a 200-million gas limit raise minimum hardware requirements. The Ethereum Foundation's plan to introduce ZK-proof validation — where validators verify proofs rather than re-execute transactions — would offset this requirement, but only approximately 10% of validators are expected to adopt ZK validation in 2026.
Timeline risk. Ethereum's upgrade schedule has historically slipped. The Merge was delayed by approximately 18 months. Fusaka launched within its target window (December 2025), suggesting improved delivery cadence, but ePBS introduces consensus-layer complexity that prior upgrades did not.
Glamsterdam is a structural overhaul targeting two of Ethereum's longest-standing constraints: centralized block production infrastructure and sequential transaction execution. The upgrade enshrines PBS at the protocol level, introduces parallel execution through access lists, and reprices the gas schedule based on empirical hardware benchmarks rather than historical estimates.
The economic implications are material. A 78.6% gas cost reduction changes the unit economics of on-chain activity — DeFi trades, NFT mints, rollup batch submissions, and smart contract deployments all become cheaper by roughly 4x at the base layer. ePBS restructures the value flow of MEV extraction, with researchers estimating up to 70% reduction in extractable value.
Whether Glamsterdam delivers on its May–June 2026 target depends on DevNet stability and client team readiness. The scope is locked, the testing is underway, and the L2 ecosystem is aligned. The question is not whether these changes are needed — the relay concentration data and MEV extraction figures make the case — but whether the Ethereum Foundation's improved delivery cadence holds through its most consensus-layer-complex upgrade since The Merge.