Ethereum core developers have advanced the Glamsterdam upgrade into its final development phase, marking a critical step toward one of the network’s largest overhauls since the 2022 Merge. According to Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi, teams are now testing all planned Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) on private developer networks (devnets) before code hardening, public testnet deployment, and a mainnet launch anticipated in the second half of 2026.
The upgrade centers on two major proposals: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS, EIP-7732) and Block-Level Access Lists (BALs, EIP-7928). ePBS moves the separation of block building and block proposing directly into Ethereum’s core protocol, reducing reliance on off-chain relays and aiming to improve transparency around block production and maximal extractable value (MEV) risks. BALs allow each block to declare in advance which accounts and contract data it will access, enabling nodes to pre-load data and potentially process transactions in parallel for faster execution.
Additionally, Glamsterdam introduces gas repricing changes that make high-compute operations cheaper while raising costs for persistent state storage. Jayanthi noted this “changes the cost of actions on Ethereum,” aligning fees more closely with resource consumption and supporting newer scaling technologies like zero-knowledge proofs. Private devnets currently include the complete proposal set, with no fixed timeline yet, but Jayanthi described progress as “massive.” If the current testing phase remains stable, public testnets will follow, paving the way for a mainnet schedule later this year.
