The Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade has passed rehearsal and is scheduled to go live on October 6 in Sepolia
The Ethereum Glamsterdam upgrade continues to confirm blocks after adopting new block construction rules this week, passing key tests and paving the way for the planned launch on the Sepolia public testnet on October 6. The Nethermind client subsequently completed performance testing involving one of the largest changes in Glamsterdam, with all 2302 tests passing, processing 57.07 billion gas in 3 minutes and 15 seconds, averaging about 2.9 billion gas per second.
This benchmark measures the speed of the Nethermind execution software rather than the entire network, testing block-level access lists. This mechanism informs Ethereum nodes in advance about which accounts and storage data will be used in the block, allowing nodes to fetch data and check unrelated transactions simultaneously, whereas the current Ethereum mostly processes related work sequentially, limiting the amount of activity each block can accommodate. About an hour after going live on the testnet, Glamsterdam raised the block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million, freeing up space for more activities such as payments and token swaps in each block.
The 200 million gas limit allows Ethereum to absorb more activity before users start bidding for block space, thereby alleviating fee spikes during transaction surges or when popular tokens go live. Larger blocks are also harder to verify, which may make it difficult for small-scale operators to keep up; Glamsterdam aims to gain additional capacity without excessively increasing chain operating costs. This upgrade also extends the block data propagation time from about 2 seconds to 9 seconds and plans to incorporate the handover and payment of block construction and verification into Ethereum's own rules, reducing reliance on external relay services.
