On October 22, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation announced that the Glamsterdam upgrade, originally scheduled for activation on the Hoodi testnet on October 26, would be postponed. The decision f
On October 22, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation announced that the Glamsterdam upgrade, originally scheduled for activation on the Hoodi testnet on October 26, would be postponed. The decision followed concerns about potential compatibility issues between EIP-8037 and existing smart contracts on Ethereum mainnet. A planned increase in the testnet’s Gas Limit to 200 million was also put on hold, with no new activation date confirmed at the time of the announcement.
Glamsterdam is a significant step in Ethereum’s efforts to scale Layer 1. By improving block processing, resource pricing, and execution efficiency, the upgrade aims to create more room for network growth. Yet the potential risks identified during development highlight a broader reality: Once a blockchain supports a large ecosystem of smart contracts and decentralized applications, improving performance is no longer simply a matter of changing technical parameters. It also requires preserving compatibility and stability across the ecosystem.
This raises a long-term challenge for the Web3 industry: How can blockchain networks continue improving performance while keeping existing applications stable and ensuring that the underlying infrastructure can evolve safely and sustainably?
Glamsterdam is one of the major upgrades on Ethereum’s roadmap. Its key components include Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), Block-Level Access Lists (BAL), and improvements to Gas pricing. Together, these changes are intended to improve block construction, state access, and transaction execution, creating the conditions for further Layer 1 scaling.
At the center of the postponement is EIP-8037: State Creation Gas Cost Increase.
On Ethereum, Gas serves more than one purpose. It measures the computational resources required to execute transactions while also helping constrain the resources consumed by the network. Increasing the block Gas Limit can allow more transactions to be processed, but it can also accelerate the growth of on-chain state, increasing the storage and maintenance burden on nodes.
EIP-8037 seeks to address this challenge by adjusting the cost of creating state and introducing a more distinct approach to resource accounting. The goal is to make Gas pricing better reflect the infrastructure costs associated with state growth, supporting future increases in network capacity.
The complication is that some deployed smart contracts may depend on existing Gas accounting and execution behavior. When underlying protocol rules change, a contract’s execution path, resource consumption, or error-handling behavior may be affected, even if its code remains unchanged.
This is particularly relevant to DeFi applications involving multiple layers of contract calls. Changes to Gas accounting can potentially alter how certain failed calls are handled, creating compatibility risks that require careful investigation.
Ethereum developers therefore chose to postpone the Hoodi testnet upgrade until further analysis could be completed. This does not mean that Ethereum mainnet experienced a widespread failure. Rather, it demonstrates why protocol upgrades on mature blockchains require rigorous testing and security review.
The Glamsterdam delay highlights an important reality: Blockchain performance can improve through protocol optimization, but every change to the underlying rules must account for the execution environment on which existing applications depend.
In the early stages of blockchain development, metrics such as TPS, Gas Fee, and transaction confirmation time were often the primary measures of network performance. Higher throughput, lower transaction costs, and faster processing could translate directly into a better user experience.
As blockchain ecosystems mature, however, the criteria for evaluating infrastructure are changing.
A blockchain that has been operating for years may support a vast collection of DeFi protocols, smart contracts, wallets, developer tools, and cross-chain applications. These systems depend not only on the network’s ability to execute transactions but also on the relative stability of its underlying protocol rules.
First, performance improvements can change the conditions under which existing contracts execute.
Changes to Gas pricing, resource limits, or execution semantics may produce unexpected behavior in contracts that rely on previous rules. This is particularly important for smart contracts that have already been deployed and cannot easily be modified.
Second, expanding network capacity can increase infrastructure costs.
Raising the Gas Limit can increase a block’s potential processing capacity, but it may also increase the volume of data that nodes must process and store. If resource requirements continue to rise, operating a node may become more expensive, potentially affecting network decentralization.
Finally, the larger the ecosystem becomes, the more stakeholders must coordinate around protocol upgrades.
Validators, client developers, wallet providers, application teams, and infrastructure operators all need to test their systems and adapt to new protocol rules.
Blockchain scaling is therefore no longer just a competition over performance metrics. It has become a systems-engineering challenge involving execution efficiency, resource costs, application compatibility, and network governance.
For the next generation of Web3 infrastructure, what matters is not only how many transactions a network can process, but also whether it can remain secure, stable, and capable of continuous evolution as it scales.
As performance requirements and system complexity increase, blockchain architecture itself becomes increasingly important.
Traditional Monolithic Blockchain designs generally handle multiple core functions — including Execution, Settlement, Data Availability, and Consensus — within a tightly integrated underlying system. This approach offers a high degree of integration, but dependencies between functions can also make certain protocol changes more difficult to coordinate.
Modular Blockchain architecture takes a different approach by separating responsibilities and establishing clearer boundaries between Execution, Settlement, Data Availability, and Consensus.
The value of this design goes beyond making blockchains faster. It creates opportunities to optimize and scale different functions according to their specific requirements.
For example, the Execution Layer can focus on smart contract execution efficiency, Data Availability components can address data publication and verification requirements, and the Settlement Layer can handle the relevant settlement and state-finalization functions.
By separating responsibilities, developers can select implementation strategies suited to each layer’s technical needs. Under appropriate conditions, this can also reduce the direct impact that certain upgrades have on other components.
However, Modular Blockchain architecture is not a universal solution to compatibility challenges. Dependencies between modules, data consistency, security assumptions, and upgrade coordination remain important considerations. Changes in one layer can still affect other components through cross-layer interactions.
Modularity therefore provides a more flexible way to organize blockchain systems, rather than a guarantee that every component can be upgraded independently without coordination.
The next phase of blockchain competition will depend not only on individual performance metrics, but also on whether infrastructure can balance scalability, system stability, and long-term evolution through thoughtful architectural design.
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Ethereum’s Glamsterdam delay offers another reminder to the Web3 industry: As on-chain applications grow, the challenges facing public blockchains extend beyond transaction throughput to include resource management, system compatibility, and long-term upgrade flexibility. Improving network performance while reducing dependencies between core functions and preserving room for future innovation is becoming a critical consideration for the next generation of Web3 infrastructure.
To address these challenges, Meta Earth is exploring three complementary approaches through the Modular Blockchain architecture of ME Network:
Layered Modular Architecture: Establishing Clear Functional Boundaries
ME Network adopts a layered modular design that separates core network responsibilities into Execution, Settlement, and Data Availability & Consensus layers. The Execution Layer handles smart contract execution and transaction processing, the Settlement Layer supports settlement-related functions, and the Data Availability & Consensus Layer provides the foundation for data availability and network consensus.
By separating these responsibilities, individual modules can be optimized according to their specific performance, security, and resource requirements. This approach can reduce direct dependencies between certain functions, creating a more flexible architectural foundation for future network expansion and technical upgrades.
Rollup Scaling: Supporting Growing Transaction Processing Demands
As Web3 applications and on-chain transaction volumes continue to grow, simply increasing the processing capacity of the underlying network may not be sufficient to balance performance, infrastructure costs, and decentralization over the long term.
ME Network incorporates Rollup scaling into its architectural approach, exploring how transaction processing can be distributed across different execution environments while leveraging the relevant settlement and security mechanisms of the underlying network.
This design direction can reduce reliance on continuously expanding a single execution layer, providing additional options for accommodating future network growth.
Cross-Chain Interoperability: Enabling Multi-Network Collaboration and Ecosystem Expansion
The future Web3 ecosystem is unlikely to operate on a single blockchain. As networks, applications, and digital assets continue to evolve, cross-chain interoperability will become an increasingly important part of blockchain infrastructure.
Through MBC (an IBC-based cross-chain interoperability architecture), ME Network explores connectivity and coordination between different blockchain networks, providing a technical foundation for cross-chain data and asset interactions.
This approach can help expand ecosystem connectivity while creating more opportunities for individual networks to evolve according to their own technical requirements.
From Architectural Design to Long-Term Evolution
These three approaches address different aspects of blockchain development: Layered modular architecture focuses on separating core functions, Rollup scaling addresses transaction processing capacity, and cross-chain interoperability supports collaboration and connectivity across networks. Together, they form the technical direction through which ME Network is exploring long-term scalability.
However, Modular Blockchain architecture does not automatically eliminate smart contract compatibility risks, nor does architectural design alone demonstrate seamless upgrade capabilities. Compatibility, security, and long-term reliability across modules and networks must still be validated through implementation, ongoing testing, and real-world ecosystem adoption.
For Meta Earth, sustainable Web3 infrastructure must do more than support larger transaction volumes and application ecosystems. It must also provide the architectural flexibility needed to adapt to future technological change. ME Network’s modular approach reflects this long-term vision of building blockchain infrastructure designed not only to scale, but also to evolve.
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam delay is not an isolated event in the history of blockchain scaling. It reflects a broader class of challenges that mature public blockchains must address as their technology and ecosystems evolve.
As more financial applications, digital assets, and user activities move into Web3, public blockchains must do more than process additional transactions. They must also ensure that ongoing changes to the underlying infrastructure do not unnecessarily disrupt the applications and ecosystems already built on top of them.
The next stage of blockchain competition will not be defined solely by how much performance improves, but by whether networks can continue scaling while preserving security, compatibility, and stability.
From this perspective, Modular Blockchain architecture is becoming more than a strategy for performance optimization. It represents an important direction for exploring long-term scalability and sustainable evolution in the next generation of Web3 infrastructure.
This is also the technical vision Meta Earth continues to pursue through ME Network: Building not only for a larger Web3 ecosystem, but also for a blockchain future designed to keep evolving.
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