Ethereum’s next major upgrade, Glamsterdam, has been running on the Sepolia testnet for two days since 10/6. I went straight to the on-chain data:
Since the upgrade, Sepolia has continued to finalize blocks normally. The block gas limit rose from 60 million to 200 million, reaching that level in about 11 hours. It has since held steady at 199–200 million—3.3 times the mainnet limit.
But for ETH holders, another set of figures matters more: today, the mainnet limit is still 60 million, and the last roughly 1,000 blocks used only 50% of it on average. The median base fee was about 0.17 gwei. We haven’t even filled the capacity we already have.
My take (inference): Glamsterdam first addresses “fitting more transactions and keeping validation up to speed,” rather than directly increasing demand for ETH. If capacity grows but usage doesn’t keep pace, fees and burning could actually fall. Token value will only come back into focus when L1 transactions genuinely increase.
Technically, there are two main features: ePBS (EIP-7732) puts “who builds the block and who proposes it” into the protocol, giving validators more time to check it; BAL (EIP-7928) lets nodes read and validate in parallel.
Regular holders don’t need to do anything this time (the EF announcement’s exact wording). Teams writing contracts should watch out for gas repricing; contracts with hard-coded gas values may need changes.
Next, keep an eye on tonight’s core developers’ meeting at 22:00 (UTC+8) / 14:00 UTC: Hoodi testnet is tentatively scheduled for 10/27, but that isn’t final. There’s still no official mainnet date (the target is Q4). If Hoodi is delayed, the mainnet schedule will get even tighter.
At the time of writing, ETH was around 2,569 and ETH/BTC was 0.0310 (Binance).
$ETH | Sources: EF blog, ethereum/pm, Sepolia/mainnet node data | Not investment advice
Since the upgrade, Sepolia has continued to finalize blocks normally. The block gas limit rose from 60 million to 200 million, reaching that level in about 11 hours. It has since held steady at 199–200 million—3.3 times the mainnet limit.
But for ETH holders, another set of figures matters more: today, the mainnet limit is still 60 million, and the last roughly 1,000 blocks used only 50% of it on average. The median base fee was about 0.17 gwei. We haven’t even filled the capacity we already have.
My take (inference): Glamsterdam first addresses “fitting more transactions and keeping validation up to speed,” rather than directly increasing demand for ETH. If capacity grows but usage doesn’t keep pace, fees and burning could actually fall. Token value will only come back into focus when L1 transactions genuinely increase.
Technically, there are two main features: ePBS (EIP-7732) puts “who builds the block and who proposes it” into the protocol, giving validators more time to check it; BAL (EIP-7928) lets nodes read and validate in parallel.
Regular holders don’t need to do anything this time (the EF announcement’s exact wording). Teams writing contracts should watch out for gas repricing; contracts with hard-coded gas values may need changes.
Next, keep an eye on tonight’s core developers’ meeting at 22:00 (UTC+8) / 14:00 UTC: Hoodi testnet is tentatively scheduled for 10/27, but that isn’t final. There’s still no official mainnet date (the target is Q4). If Hoodi is delayed, the mainnet schedule will get even tighter.
At the time of writing, ETH was around 2,569 and ETH/BTC was 0.0310 (Binance).
$ETH | Sources: EF blog, ethereum/pm, Sepolia/mainnet node data | Not investment advice