October 22, 2026 — The highly anticipated October 26 activation of the Glamsterdam network upgrade on the Hoodi testnet has been officially postponed, developers announced today. The delay also puts a temporary hold on Hoodi’s scheduled gas-limit increase to 200 million. Consequently, all previous activation schedules, instructions, and target parameters for the testnet deployment have been superseded.
The core development teams are advising node operators, validators, and network participants to consult subsequent technical guidance regarding the revised timeline for bringing Glamsterdam to Hoodi. While the testnet rollout experiences this temporary roadblock, the broader trajectory of Ethereum’s Layer 1 scaling roadmap continues to move forward, building upon the upgrade’s initial activation on the Sepolia testnet earlier this month on October 6.
Glamsterdam Overview and Core Objectives
The Glamsterdam network upgrade represents a major milestone in Ethereum’s evolution, combining the Amsterdam execution layer upgrade with the Gloas consensus layer upgrade. Together, these complementary upgrades introduce sophisticated structural changes designed to enhance Layer 1 throughput, optimize block-level validation, and refine gas pricing mechanics to better reflect actual resource usage and state growth costs.
At the heart of the Glamsterdam specification are two headlining structural advancements: enshrined proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists. These modifications fundamentally alter how blocks are produced, broadcast, and validated across the network, laying a robust technical foundation for future scaling initiatives without compromising the decentralization or security of node operators.
Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS)
A central pillar of the Glamsterdam upgrade is the integration of enshrined proposer-builder separation, codified under EIP-7732. Historically, the separation of block proposers and builders relied on external, trusted middleware to facilitate the exchange of execution payloads and validator bids. Eipt-7732 brings this crucial mechanism directly into Ethereum’s consensus protocol.
Under the new ePBS framework, a block proposer includes a builder’s cryptographic commitment to an execution payload, and the builder subsequently reveals that payload. The protocol itself handles the secure payment mechanics to the proposer, effectively eliminating reliance on external middleware for the exchange. Furthermore, the upgrade separates consensus validation from execution validation, granting validators significantly more breathing room to validate execution payloads accurately. A newly established payload timeliness committee will attest to whether the builder revealed its payload and corresponding blob data in a timely manner. Validator operators and teams maintaining builder infrastructure are strongly encouraged to review the updated duties and protocol interfaces ahead of the eventual activation.
Block-Level Access Lists (BALs)
Complementing ePBS, EIP-7928 introduces enforced block-level access lists to the Ethereum protocol. These lists systematically record the accounts and storage locations accessed over the course of a block, alongside their corresponding post-transaction state changes.
By providing explicit access tracking at the block level, the upgrade enables client software to read state data from disk in parallel, validate incoming transactions concurrently, and compute state roots with substantially greater efficiency. When combined with ePBS, block-level access lists provide the architectural muscle needed to scale execution capacity while keeping hardware requirements and block validation practical for everyday node operators.
Gas Pricing, Repricing, and State Growth
Glamsterdam also introduces comprehensive adjustments to gas accounting to align transaction fees more closely with underlying computational and storage resource consumption. Specifically, EIP-8037 increases and separately meters the cost associated with creating new state, while EIP-8038 updates broader state-access costs. Additional refinements cover intrinsic transaction gas parameters, calldata processing, access lists, and overarching block gas accounting.
Application and smart contract developers must test their contracts and gas estimation logic against these revised economic rules. Contracts that rely on fixed gas stipends, hardcoded gas limits, or obsolete assumptions regarding remaining gas may require modifications to function correctly. Developers can utilize specialized search tools and impact guides to audit affected contracts and prepare their decentralized applications for the new environment.
Beyond economic repricing, Glamsterdam delivers several developer-friendly enhancements, including native ETH transfer logs, a new slot-number opcode, an increased maximum contract size limit, a deterministic factory contract, and advanced stack-manipulation instructions. Consensus-level modifications include forward-compatible data structures, mechanisms to exclude slashed validators from proposing new blocks, and increased exit and consolidation churn rates.
Security, Testing, and the Bug Bounty Program
The Ethereum Bug Bounty Program remains fully active for all Glamsterdam specifications and associated EIPs. Client implementations become eligible for bug bounty rewards as soon as their respective software releases are officially confirmed and published. Security researchers and developers are encouraged to review the official Ethereum Bug Bounty documentation for details regarding reward multipliers, submission guidelines, and reporting requirements.
Deployment Schedule and Network Parameters
The agreed deployment schedule establishes a sequential rollout across Ethereum’s testnet environments before any consideration is given to mainnet integration. The upgrade successfully activated on the Sepolia testnet at epoch 353,024, slot 11,296,768, on October 6, 2026.
The subsequent activation on the Hoodi testnet—originally slated for epoch 132,352, slot 4,235,264, corresponding to October 26, 2026—has been postponed. Once a new activation timeline is established, Hoodi’s gas limit is still expected to be raised to 200 million via the designated gas limit schedule, mirroring the parameters established on Sepolia. A concrete mainnet activation date and time remain undecided and will be announced by client development teams only after comprehensive testnet stability has been verified.
Client Releases and Operator Guidance
As the rescheduled activation approaches, node operators running consensus and execution layer clients will need to update their software to versions explicitly supporting the Glamsterdam upgrade on Hoodi. Validator operators must ensure that both their consensus layer beacon nodes and validator client software are updated concurrently.
Furthermore, operators utilizing external block-building infrastructure or specialized tooling, such as commit-boost, should review upgrade instructions specific to their chosen software stack. Mainnet users, standard ETH holders, and non-staking participants are not required to take any immediate action regarding testnet-specific announcements. The Ethereum community continues to coordinate transparently through developer meetings and public channels as the engineering teams navigate the revised Hoodi deployment timeline.
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
