Ethereum is preparing for what could become its most significant base-layer upgrade since The Merge, with developers outlining a roadmap for the Glamsterdam hard fork scheduled for the second half of 2026.
The upgrade garnered even more traction after crypto analyst Crypto With Gopal highlighted that the network is progressing towards its next scaling stage.
Source: X
As explained by the Ethereum Foundation, Glamsterdam will increase the capacity of Layer-1 and make the blockchain more favorable to validators, developers, and decentralized applications.
What makes Glamsterdam unique from other past updates is that it mainly focuses on block validation.
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Two Headline Features Lead the Upgrade
Upgrades will make major transformations in the execution and consensus layers of Ethereum using two primary aspects of upgrades, namely Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (EIP-7732) and Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928).
EIP-7732 involves splitting up the block creation and validation, thus allowing validators to use the protocol for the creation of blocks in order to increase efficiency and limit reliance on third parties to build blocks.
Block-Level Access Lists involve making the access list mandatory for entire blocks, increasing the speed of processing in parallel and lowering gas fees.
Ten EIPs Already Scheduled
The developers of Ethereum plan to implement ten new EIPs on their next devnet. The approved EIPs include EIP-7708, which defines the structure of ETH transfer logs, as well as EIP-7954, which increases the size of the smart contract from 24 KiB to 64 KiB.
Source: Ethereum Foundation
In addition, there are enhancements related to gas metering, call data, instruction sets, and state handling. On the other hand, 15 more EIPs are pending, relating to gas fees, validators, networking, and staking. EIP-7904 is also likely to be rejected.
What Glamsterdam Means for Ethereum’s Future
Ethereum’s roadmap, Glamsterdam, highlights the evolution of the platform’s underlying infrastructure with increasing usage and application development on it.
Developers can benefit from the planned improvements through reduced costs and simpler app development processes. Faster block production for validators and stable fees for users might be the outcome of the upcoming upgrade.
The upgrade is scheduled to happen over a year from now, but it provides a glimpse into Ethereum’s future development plans beyond The Merge.
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