Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined the core components of the network's next major upgrade, the "Glamsterdam" hardfork, scheduled for the first half of 2026. The upgrade is built around eight Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) and follows the three-track roadmap established in Ethereum's 2025 "predictable engineering delivery model."
The technical overhaul focuses on four key areas: performance, resource management, scalability, and data availability. A central change is the introduction of parallel block verification via Block-level Access Lists, which will allow nodes to process multiple parts of a block simultaneously, significantly speeding up block verification times. The upgrade also includes Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), moving block building directly onto the Ethereum protocol to enhance decentralization and allow for nearly the full slot time to be used for verification.
For users, a major highlight is a proposed 78.6% reduction in gas fees for both simple and complex smart contracts. The upgrade also introduces the "Reservoir" gas system, which separates network resources into multiple dimensions (like compute and storage), each with its own dynamic pricing. This removes the current 16 million gas contract size limit, enabling larger contracts without breaking existing applications.
The roadmap details a multi-year plan for integrating zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs). By 2026, around 5% of the network is expected to run ZK-EVM clients in a testing capacity. Broader adoption targeting 20% of validators is slated for 2027, which would allow for a significant gas limit increase. The end goal is a "3-of-5 multi-proof" security model to prevent a single bug from compromising the chain.
Finally, the PeerDAS upgrade aims to boost data availability capacity to roughly 8 MB per second. Eventually, Ethereum's own block data will migrate into blobs, allowing for full chain verification using ZK-SNARKs and PeerDAS without downloading the complete history, making light verification the default.
Despite this forward-looking technical announcement, Ethereum's market price remained below $2,000, indicating the market is currently reacting to broader conditions rather than the specific roadmap.
