TechFlow reported on June 17, citing CoinDesk, that Ethereum core developers have entered the final development phase of the Glamsterdam upgrade. The teams are currently running development networks, or devnets, that include all planned Ethereum Improvement Proposals, known as EIPs. Once this stage is completed, the upgrade process will move forward to public test networks.
A major fork upgrade after the Merge
Parithosh Jayanthi, a core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, said Glamsterdam “could be the largest fork upgrade since the Merge.” According to his statement, the upgrade will fundamentally change many of Ethereum’s underlying assumptions and lay the groundwork for large-scale future scaling. Glamsterdam is expected to officially go live in the second half of 2026, although no specific launch date has been set.
ePBS, access lists and Gas repricing
One of the central components of the upgrade is embedded proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, under EIP-7732. This mechanism moves the block-building and proposal process, which has been handled off-chain, onto the chain. The stated purpose is to reduce manipulation risks and centralization concerns related to MEV. As part of Glamsterdam, ePBS directly addresses the basic design of Ethereum’s block production workflow.
Another key item is the block-level access list proposal, EIP-7928. This would allow a block to declare in advance which accounts and smart contract data it needs to access, improving execution efficiency and predictability. The upgrade also includes broad Gas fee repricing. Under this adjustment, the cost of high-computation operations will be reduced, while the cost of state storage will increase, with the goal of more accurately reflecting resource consumption and maintaining compatibility with zero-knowledge proof scaling designs.
At this stage, the development teams are focused on testing, finalizing specifications and communicating with the community. With devnets now running the full set of planned EIPs, Glamsterdam has moved into a stage aimed at progressing toward public test networks. Those public test network steps will form an important part of the path before the upgrade reaches its expected mainnet release window in the second half of 2026.