Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade Enters Final Phase With ePBS and Gas Repricing

Proof-of-stake Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade just entered its final development phase, with devnets now running the full set of planned EIPs. Parithosh Jayanthi, a core devops engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, confirmed the milestone: "We're working on devnets with all the EIPs in them right now. This is the last phase before we work on hardening and then shipping the testnets." No fixed launch date yet, but the target remains the second half of 2026.

ePBS Moves MEV Separation Onchain, Block-Level Access Lists Speed Up Execution

Two headline proposals define Glamsterdam. Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (EIP-7732) pulls the split between block builders and block proposers into Ethereum's core protocol. Today that separation relies on offchain infrastructure with extra trust assumptions and centralization risks. Moving it onchain cuts manipulation vectors around maximal extractable value (MEV). Jayanthi described Glamsterdam as "probably the largest fork we've had since the Merge" that will "change a lot of assumptions about Ethereum and set us up for much more scaling in the future."

Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928) let blocks declare upfront which accounts and contract data they'll touch. Clients can preload that state, making block execution faster, more predictable, and easier to optimize. Both proposals are in the devnet test images today.

Gas Repricing Reshapes Fee Economics for L2s and ZK-Proofs

Beyond those structural changes, Glamsterdam bundles a broad set of gas repricings. Jayanthi: "This will majorly change the cost of actions on Ethereum. High-level compute gets cheaper and state gets more expensive." The repricing aims to align fees with actual resource consumption while making the network friendlier to zero-knowledge proving systems. Developers are now focused on testing, finalizing specs, and community outreach about the fee implications.

For anyone building on Ethereum or operating infrastructure, these repricings demand immediate attention. State-heavy operations become pricier; compute-heavy transactions get a discount. That alone could shift application design patterns before the fork even activates.

Glamsterdam is shaping up to be the most consequential Ethereum protocol change since the 2022 proof-of-stake transition. If the devnet cycle holds, public testnets follow within weeks, and mainnet activation lands before year-end.

Source: Ethereum's biggest protocol overhaul in years moves into its final development stage
Domain: coindesk.com