Ethereum's next hard fork, Glamsterdam, entered its first devnet phase the week of April 13, 2026, according to the Ethereum Foundation's Checkpoint #9 update published April 10. The upgrade — the network's largest architectural change since The Merge in 2022 — centers on two headliner EIPs: EIP-...
"ePBS has been an incredibly structurally complex change, splitting block production into two coordinating parties inside consensus." — Nixo, Ethereum Core Developer (April 10, 2026)
Ethereum's next hard fork, Glamsterdam, entered its first devnet phase the week of April 13, 2026, according to the Ethereum Foundation's Checkpoint #9 update published April 10. The upgrade — the network's largest architectural change since The Merge in 2022 — centers on two headliner EIPs: EIP-7732 (Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation) and EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists). Together, they target a gas limit increase from 60 million to 200 million per block, parallel transaction execution, and an estimated 78.6% reduction in gas fees.
The timeline remains uncertain. Core developers initially targeted H1 2026, with a tentative June mainnet date, but the Checkpoint #9 update signals Q2 delivery is unlikely given ePBS complexity. ETH trades at approximately $2,204 with a market capitalization near $270 billion as of April 12, 2026. The upgrade's economic implications extend to Ethereum's 500,000+ validators, the $12.5 trillion repo market migrating on-chain, and Layer 2 rollups that currently process 90% of ecosystem transactions through three dominant networks: Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
The Ethereum Foundation's Checkpoint #9 blog post, published April 10, 2026, confirmed that core developers are targeting the week of April 13 for the first generalized Glamsterdam devnet, contingent on ePBS devnet stabilization. The devnet launch follows months of component-level testing across earlier devnets (Devnet-4 and Devnet-5), where three proposed EIPs were validated.
The path to mainnet follows a defined sequence: devnet iterations, client releases, security reviews, public testnets, and mainnet deployment. No specific mainnet date has been committed. Nixo, an Ethereum core developer who authored the Checkpoint #9 update, assessed that a Q2 2026 Glamsterdam delivery "appears unlikely given current complexity levels." The H1 2026 window is now described as aspirational rather than firm.
For context, Ethereum shipped two hard forks in 2025 — Pectra (May 2025) and Fusaka (later in 2025). Former Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak had previously warned the community to focus on Fusaka delivery before discussing Glamsterdam, stating that "no amount of talking about Ethereum's roadmap and vision matters if we cannot achieve coordination levels that consistently meet goals on schedule."
The Ethereum Foundation's 2026 protocol priorities document identifies three development tracks: Scale, Improve UX, and Harden the L1. Glamsterdam addresses the first and third tracks directly.
Glamsterdam's upgrade scope spans two consensus-layer and execution-layer headliners, plus a bundle of gas repricing and state economics proposals.
Currently, Ethereum's block production relies on off-chain relays — primarily Flashbots, Titan, and BeaverBuild — that coordinate between validators (proposers) and specialized block builders. According to data compiled by BlockEden, 80-90% of Ethereum block production flows through these off-chain intermediaries. Approximately 30% of blocks filter transactions per OFAC sanctions lists, a function of relay-level compliance decisions rather than protocol-level rules.
EIP-7732 moves this coordination on-chain. Under the new design:
The structural complexity is significant. As the Checkpoint #9 update notes, "every part of the stack has to reason about 'partial blocks' and two-party coordination." The propagation window for execution payloads expands from approximately 2 seconds to 9 seconds to accommodate the two-party handoff.
EIP-7928 introduces structured declarations specifying exactly which storage slots and accounts each transaction will read or write. A hash of this access list — the "BAL root" — is embedded directly in the block header.
The practical effect: nodes can identify non-overlapping transactions and process them in parallel. According to BlockEden's analysis, BALs enable 10-30x improvements in execution throughput. Because the BAL includes post-execution state values, nodes syncing to the network's current state can copy final results directly rather than re-executing transactions.
Over 30 additional EIP proposals were declined and deferred to future forks.
Ethereum's mainnet gas limit currently sits at 60 million per block, a level reached during the 2025 upgrade cycle. The Glamsterdam upgrade targets a phased increase:
| Phase | Gas Limit | Status | |-------|-----------|--------| | Pre-Glamsterdam (current) | 60M | Live | | Glamsterdam Phase 1 | 100M | Pending devnet validation | | Post-ePBS activation | 200M | Contingent on ePBS stability |
Stańczak told the Bankless Summit that the gas limit would increase to 100 million in H1 2026 and predicted it would double to 200 million following full ePBS operationalization. Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano stated in late 2025 that 180 million was "a baseline target for the year, not a best-case outcome."
At 200 million gas per block, combined with parallel execution via BALs, Ethereum's L1 throughput target reaches approximately 10,000 transactions per second — compared to the current 15-20 TPS. For context: Solana processes 1,000-1,500 TPS with 400ms block times; Monad targets 10,000+ TPS with 400ms block times. Ethereum's 12-second block time means it must pack substantially more computation per block to match competitors on raw throughput.
The 78.6% fee reduction from EIP-7904 repricing applies across both simple transfers and complex smart contract interactions. However, the offsetting state economics EIPs (EIP-8037, EIP-8038) mean that state-expanding operations — creating new accounts, writing to new storage slots — will become more expensive, not less.
The economic rationale for ePBS is rooted in Ethereum's current MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) infrastructure. The existing system relies on trust assumptions: validators trust relays to faithfully convey builder bids, and users trust that relays do not censor or front-run transactions.
In December 2024, Flashbots migrated its operations to BuilderNet, a decentralized block building network jointly operated with Beaverbuild and Nethermind, running on Trusted Execution Environments. Despite this decentralization effort, the relay layer remains concentrated.
EIP-7732 eliminates the relay dependency entirely. By enshrining the proposer-builder handoff in the consensus layer, the protocol removes an off-chain trust assumption that has persisted since The Merge. The sealed-bid mechanism — where transaction contents are only revealed post-finalization — reduces front-running and sandwich attack vectors structurally rather than through relay policy.
The trade-off is implementation complexity. Every consensus client (Lighthouse, Prysm, Teku, Nimbus, Lodestar) must implement the two-party coordination logic, and every execution client (Geth, Nethermind, Besu, Erigon, Reth) must support BAL generation and parallel execution. This cross-client coordination requirement is a primary driver of the development timeline uncertainty.
Glamsterdam's gas limit increase and potential expansion to 72+ data blobs per block directly affect Layer 2 rollup economics. Lower L1 gas costs reduce the cost of posting calldata and state commitments, translating to lower end-user fees on rollups.
The L2 landscape has consolidated significantly. According to a 21Shares report, three networks — Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism — now process approximately 90% of all L2 transactions. More than 50 rollups compete for the remaining 10%. The report warned that most Ethereum L2s are unlikely to survive beyond 2026.
OP Labs, the development company behind Optimism, cut 20% of its staff in March 2026, according to The Block, as L2 consolidation accelerated. The staff reduction reflects margin pressure across the L2 sector, where competition has driven transaction fees toward zero on multiple networks.
A faster, cheaper L1 could theoretically reduce demand for L2 solutions. At 10,000 TPS with 78% lower fees, the economic case for routing transactions through rollups weakens for certain use cases. However, the combined L1 + L2 throughput target of "hundreds of thousands of TPS," as described in Ethereum Foundation planning documents, suggests the intended architecture remains complementary rather than competitive.
The Ethereum Foundation's Checkpoint #9 also outlined the next upgrade after Glamsterdam: Hegotá, targeted for H2 2026.
Hegotá's confirmed headliner is EIP-7805 (FOCIL) — Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists — on the consensus layer. FOCIL addresses transaction censorship at the protocol level by requiring proposers to include transactions from inclusion lists.
Account Abstraction development (EIP-8141, Frame Transactions) was initially proposed as a headliner but moved to non-headliner status "due to insufficient consensus," per the Checkpoint #9 update. The community submission window for non-headlining features opened April 9, 2026.
The two-fork-per-year cadence — Glamsterdam in H1 and Hegotá in H2 — mirrors the 2025 pattern of Pectra and Fusaka. Whether this pace is sustainable remains an open question given the complexity challenges Glamsterdam has surfaced.
Glamsterdam represents Ethereum's most ambitious L1 scaling effort since the transition to proof-of-stake. The upgrade attempts to solve three problems simultaneously: execution throughput (via BALs), block production centralization (via ePBS), and fee economics (via repricing). Each is individually complex; their intersection compounds the engineering challenge.
The devnet launch this week marks the beginning of a testing period whose duration remains uncertain. Ethereum's validator set of 500,000+ nodes, the largest in any proof-of-stake network, means every protocol change requires broad client compatibility — a coordination constraint that smaller networks do not face.
The economic stakes are material. Ethereum's L1 currently settles portions of a $12.5 trillion repo market moving on-chain, supports $12.88 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries, and anchors Layer 2 networks processing millions of daily transactions. Whether the upgrade ships in H1 or slips to H2 will shape the competitive dynamics between Ethereum and alternative L1 platforms through the remainder of 2026.