Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Goes Live on Sepolia Testnet

Ethereum's highly anticipated Glamsterdam upgrade went live on the Sepolia testnet at 1:53 pm UTC on Tuesday, marking one of the final major rehearsals before the network's mainnet activation. The launch was confirmed by Ethereum community contributor Pooja Ranjan in a post on X, representing a critical milestone in Ethereum's 2026 scaling roadmap detailed in a Sept. 28 Ethereum Foundation blog post.

The upgrade introduces two headliner changes aimed at boosting throughput on Ethereum's layer-1. Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), formalized as EIP-7732, separates block proposers from builders within Ethereum's consensus protocol and splits consensus validation from execution validation, giving validators more time to process execution payloads. The second pillar, EIP-7928, introduces enforced block-level access lists (BALs) that record all accounts and storage locations touched during a block, enabling clients to validate transactions in parallel and compute state roots more efficiently.

Glamsterdam follows the Fusaka upgrade and is designed to harden Ethereum's base layer, improve scalability, and lower friction for users. A May blog post from the Ethereum Foundation confirmed a 200 million gas limit floor for the network post-upgrade, delivering a substantial speed boost from current gas levels without compromising parallel processing capabilities. Following the Sepolia deployment, developers will set an activation date for the Hoodi testnet before finalizing the mainnet launch timeline.

The upgrade arrives amid growing institutional interest in Ethereum's performance, coming shortly after Ethlabs filed a proposal to reduce Ethereum block times. If successful on mainnet, Glamsterdam could significantly improve transaction speeds and block capacity, positioning Ethereum to better compete in an increasingly congested multi-chain landscape.