Ethereum's most consequential 2026 upgrade is now live on a major public test network. The Glamsterdam upgrade activated on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6, putting a broad package of protocol
Ethereum's most consequential 2026 upgrade is now live on a major public test network. The Glamsterdam upgrade activated on the Sepolia testnet on Oct. 6, putting a broad package of protocol changes through one of their final rehearsals before a planned mainnet deployment.
The most immediate change in the Sepolia deployment is a dramatic increase in the network's gas limit. The upgrade raises the gas limit from 60 million to 200 million on the testnet. That matters because increasing the gas limit can allow more transactions per block, which could lead to lower fees when network activity is high. Developers will use the Sepolia run to monitor whether validators and clients can safely handle the larger blocks that come with it.
The Glamsterdam upgrade brings 25 proposed Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) into public testing, including 18 core EIPs and seven others.The Sepolia deployment allows developers, projects, and infrastructure providers to test their applications and systems against the proposed changes and identify compatibility issues before any mainnet rollout.
The upgrade's headline changes are enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS) and block-level access lists (BALs), which change how blocks are produced and validated to support greater throughput on the Ethereum mainnet.Under EIP-7732's proposer-builder design, a proposer places a builder's commitment to an execution payload in the consensus block, and the builder subsequently reveals the payload, with the protocol handling payment to the proposer and reducing reliance on trusted middleware.
Glamsterdam combines Amsterdam's execution-layer changes with Gloas' consensus-layer upgrade, targeting higher Layer 1 throughput.According to Ethereum community contributor Pooja Ranjan, the upgrade activated on Sepolia on Oct. 6 at 1:53 p.m. UTC, putting changes to block production, parallel processing, and gas pricing through a public network test.
Following the testnet launch, developers will determine Glamsterdam's activation date on the Hoodi testnet before setting a final mainnet launch date.Sepolia marks one of the final major rehearsals before the full activation of Glamsterdam, aimed at bringing more efficiency and scalability to the Ethereum mainnet.
Sources:CoinTelegraph: Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade launches on Sepolia testnetCrypto.news: Ethereum Glamsterdam hits Sepolia with 200 million gas limit testThe Crypto Times: Ethereum Activates Glamsterdam Upgrade on Sepolia for Testing
