Ethereum's biggest upgrade since the Merge is closing in

Glamsterdam, @ethereum's next hard fork, is moving through its final testing phase. The Soldøgn interop event concluded on May 2, 2026, leaving public testnets as the last hurdle before a mainnet block height is confirmed.

Two headline changes, not tweaks

The upgrade combines two layers of the protocol: the Consensus Layer update (Gloas) and the Execution Layer update (Amsterdam). Together they introduce two headline EIPs that represent genuine structural shifts rather than routine housekeeping.

The first is ePBS, or Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (EIP-7732). Today, block construction is handled almost entirely by off-chain relays that sit outside the protocol. EIP-7732 moves proposer-builder separation from off-chain infrastructure into the Ethereum protocol itself. The practical effect is that the opaque relay layer, which currently handles the vast majority of blocks, gets replaced by an in-protocol commit-reveal flow, reducing both centralization risk and opportunities for MEV extraction.

The second is Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928). By giving clients enough information about a block's read/write set up front, BALs enable parallel execution, batched I/O, and parallel state-root computation, all of which determine how big a block clients can comfortably handle. Historical data shows that 60 to 80 percent of transactions access disjoint storage slots, enabling effective parallelization. This is Ethereum's answer to faster Layer 1 chains that already process transactions concurrently.

Where things stand and what comes next

Glamsterdam progress is slow but steady: ePBS implementation is proving to be trickier than anticipated and non-headliner features like gas repricing have their own complexities to work through. Public testnets are expected to follow before mainnet activation. No block height is locked yet.

While previous upgrades like Dencun were celebrated for slashing Layer 2 costs, Glamsterdam is fundamentally an L1-first upgrade. It does not pivot Ethereum away from rollups. It hardens L1 as a high-performance settlement base, making the L2-centric roadmap more durable.

Beyond the two headliners, the Ethereum Foundation's April 2026 Checkpoint confirmed that the following upgrade, Hegotá, has already selected its own major feature: FOCIL (Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists, EIP-7805).

Sources:
Ethereum Foundation: Soldøgn Interop Recap (May 2026)
Ethereum Foundation: Checkpoint #9 (April 2026)
EIP-7928: Block-Level Access Lists, ethereum.org