Ethereum's next hard fork, Glamsterdam, has slipped from its original June 2026 target to Q3 2026 after Devnet-5 testing flagged integration issues with EIP-7732, the Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) proposal. The upgrade targets a 3.3x increase in block gas limits — from 60 million t...
"We don't friggin need more copypasta EVM chains." — Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Co-Founder, February 2026
Ethereum's next hard fork, Glamsterdam, has slipped from its original June 2026 target to Q3 2026 after Devnet-5 testing flagged integration issues with EIP-7732, the Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) proposal. The upgrade targets a 3.3x increase in block gas limits — from 60 million to 200 million — and aims to eliminate the $1.2 billion-per-year off-protocol MEV relay infrastructure that currently mediates 90% of Ethereum block construction.
Eight EIPs define the scope. Two are structural: EIP-7732 moves the builder-proposer auction on-chain, and EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists enabling parallel transaction execution. The remaining six address gas repricing, validator exit queue acceleration, and state cost management. If successfully deployed, Glamsterdam would represent the largest single execution-layer capacity expansion since The Merge.
The upgrade lands at a difficult moment for Ethereum. ETH trades near $1,977, L1 fee revenue has collapsed to $23.2 million per month (February 2026), and the network is mildly inflationary at 0.23% annually — a reversal of the "ultrasound money" thesis that defined the post-Merge narrative. Glamsterdam's capacity tripling could accelerate fee compression further, raising questions about the long-term economic sustainability of the base layer even as it strengthens the technical case for Ethereum as settlement infrastructure.
Vitalik Buterin outlined eight EIPs in late February 2026 defining Glamsterdam's full scope. The two headliners — EIP-7732 (ePBS) on the consensus layer and EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists) on the execution layer — received priority status from core developers. Supporting EIPs include EIP-7904 (gas repricing aligned to actual computational costs), EIP-2780 (reduced intrinsic transaction gas, up to 71% cheaper base transfers), EIP-8037, EIP-8061, and EIP-8045 (state cost management and validator duty adjustments).
Devnet-4 testing completed successfully. Devnet-5 is underway. Public testnet phases were planned for spring 2026, but the Ethereum Foundation confirmed in late May that the mainnet activation is now expected in Q3 2026, pushed back from the original June target.
Ethereum has a history of timeline slippage on major upgrades. The Merge shipped approximately nine months behind its earliest target. The prior forks — Pectra and Fusaka — both shipped on time in 2025, which gave developers confidence to set an aggressive Glamsterdam schedule. That confidence has since been tempered by ePBS integration complexity.
Glamsterdam is followed by Hegotá on the 2026 roadmap, though details on that fork remain sparse. Together, the two forks comprise Ethereum's most concentrated upgrade cycle since the Beacon Chain launch.
Currently, approximately 90% of Ethereum blocks are constructed through the MEV-Boost relay system — off-protocol infrastructure that separates who proposes a block from who builds it. This system relies on trusted intermediaries (relays) that sit between builders and proposers. As of April 2026, Ultra Sound relay handles 33.92% of MEV-Boost payloads, Titan relay 24.19%, bloXroute's max-profit relay 14.67%, Aestus 10.03%, bloXroute's regulated relay 9.07%, and Flashbots' relay 4.22%.
EIP-7732 moves this entire auction on-chain. Under ePBS:
The projected impact: MEV extraction reduced by up to 70%, according to developer estimates cited in multiple technical analyses. Validators will no longer need MEV-Boost, relay connections, or specialized builder software — a meaningful reduction in operational complexity and attack surface.
However, ePBS does not eliminate MEV incentives. It makes MEV more transparent and shifts competition from off-chain relay markets to on-chain builder auctions. The underlying economic incentive to extract value from transaction ordering remains. What changes is where and how that competition occurs.
EIP-7928 introduces Block-Level Access Lists (BALs), which pre-declare the accounts and smart contracts each block will interact with. This enables three parallel improvements:
The BAL size is constrained by the block gas limit rather than a fixed maximum. According to the EIP specification, the cheapest way to add an item to the BAL is a cold SLOAD at 2,100 gas (as defined in EIP-2929), with the item cost set deliberately below this minimum to create a buffer of approximately block_gas_limit / 42,000 extra items.
Without BALs, tripling the gas limit would simply mean blocks take three times longer to process. With BALs, the capacity increase translates into actual throughput gains because execution can be parallelized.
The gas limit increase from 60 million to 200 million per block is the raw capacity component. Combined with the parallel execution enabled by EIP-7928, the upgrade targets approximately 10,000 transactions per second on L1 — roughly 10x current L1 throughput.
Gas repricing EIPs bundled with Glamsterdam project a 78% reduction in fees across both simple transfers and complex smart contract calls. As of June 1, 2026, Ethereum gas prices already sit at 0.195 Gwei — down from 1.67 Gwei one year earlier. A standard ETH transfer costs approximately $0.01 to $0.20 depending on congestion.
Post-Glamsterdam, fees could approach near-zero on L1, according to analysis from MEXC Research, which projects that fees "could stay near zero for years" after the upgrade. This is positive for users but creates tension with Ethereum's fee-burn economic model.
Ethereum currently operates with over 1.1 million active validators, with 36 million ETH staked (approximately 30-31% of total supply). Average validator uptime is 99.2%, network effectiveness 98.09%, and participation rate 99.78%. The average annual staking yield sits at 3.3%.
Glamsterdam changes the validator experience in several ways:
Simplified operations. The removal of MEV-Boost dependency eliminates relay management, builder software maintenance, and associated trust assumptions. For institutional operators running hundreds or thousands of validators, this reduces operational overhead.
Exit queue acceleration. One of the upgrade's less-discussed features addresses the speed at which validators can exit large staked positions. According to Figment's analysis (May 2026), what currently takes weeks to clear the exit queue could be processed in days post-Glamsterdam. For institutional operators, faster exit processing reduces the cost associated with extended time-to-liquidity.
MEV transparency. Every builder bid is committed on-chain. The auction process becomes publicly verifiable. Stakers can observe in real time what blocks are worth and how builder payments flow. This addresses a long-standing concern among institutional participants about MEV revenue opacity.
Revenue composition uncertainty. While MEV becomes more transparent, the shift to on-chain auctions could alter execution-layer reward distributions. According to Figment, a more competitive, trust-minimized builder market "could be positive" for the variable execution-layer component of staking rewards, though the net effect remains uncertain until post-launch data is available.
Layer 2 networks currently account for approximately 95% of Ethereum's total transaction throughput. The top eight L2 networks process over 320 TPS on a typical weekday, compared to L1's capacity. Daily L2 transactions have grown from 1.9 million (2025) to approximately 2 million in 2026.
Glamsterdam's capacity tripling affects L2s in two primary ways:
Lower settlement costs. L2 rollup settlement costs on L1 are estimated to fall by approximately 70% post-Glamsterdam. This benefits Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and other rollups that batch transactions to Ethereum for final settlement.
Competitive pressure. With L1 gas fees approaching near-zero, the fee advantage that drives users to L2s narrows. However, L2s still offer sub-second finality that L1 cannot match, and many L2-specific features (custom execution environments, application-specific chains) are not replicated by L1 capacity increases.
The net effect may be a rebalancing: L1 recaptures some simple transfer and DeFi activity, while L2s retain complex application workloads and latency-sensitive use cases.
Glamsterdam's capacity expansion amplifies an existing concern. Ethereum's L1 fee revenue has been declining throughout 2025-2026:
Tripling capacity while reducing fees per transaction could further compress L1 revenue unless transaction volume increases proportionally. The "ultrasound money" thesis — which relied on fee burns exceeding issuance — requires sustained high fee revenue. Glamsterdam's design prioritizes throughput and user experience over fee maximization, implicitly betting that volume growth will eventually compensate for per-unit price compression.
This is not a novel tradeoff. Traditional infrastructure businesses (telecom, cloud) have consistently seen per-unit price declines offset by volume growth. Whether Ethereum's base layer follows this pattern depends on whether L1 can attract sufficient transaction volume at near-zero fees, or whether L2s continue to capture the majority of economic activity.
Glamsterdam represents Ethereum's attempt to resolve a structural tension: the network must scale to remain competitive with alternative L1s and its own L2 ecosystem, but scaling reduces the fee revenue that supports its economic security model. The upgrade is technically ambitious — ePBS alone would be the most significant consensus-layer change since proof-of-stake — and pairing it with a 3.3x gas limit increase and parallel execution raises the implementation bar.
For validators and institutional stakers, the near-term impact is operational simplification and greater MEV transparency. For L2 operators, settlement costs decline. For ETH holders, the economic implications are ambiguous: more capacity means more utility but potentially less fee burn.
The delay to Q3 2026 is manageable given that Pectra and Fusaka shipped on time. The risk is not the delay itself but scope creep — eight EIPs touching both consensus and execution layers create a large surface area for integration issues. Devnet-5 results, expected in coming weeks, will be the next meaningful signal.
Ethereum's 1.1 million validators, $112 billion in staked capital, and 99.78% participation rate reflect a network that operates with high reliability. Whether Glamsterdam can maintain that reliability while tripling capacity is the open question.