Ethereum developers have aligned on a target post-upgrade gas limit of around 200 million for the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, which is currently planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. This target represents a substantial increase from today's 60 million limit, following previous protocol improvements that saw the limit double from roughly 30 million in early 2025.
The Glamsterdam upgrade introduces key protocol changes designed to make larger blocks easier to process and prepare Ethereum's layer-1 network for higher throughput. While Ethereum maintains the largest developer base in the blockchain space—with roughly 7,600 monthly active developers recorded by Electric Capital, compared to about 2,300 on Solana—its speed and cost have historically lagged behind high-performance alternatives.
Addressing Hardware and Execution Challenges
Increasing the gas limit introduces significant engineering hurdles, particularly regarding validator hardware. Larger blocks give applications more execution capacity, but validators need adequate computing power to process them within fixed slot times. Excessive workloads can price smaller operators out of running nodes, risking centralization.
To combat this, the Glamsterdam upgrade approaches the problem through several mechanisms:
- Block-Level Access Lists (EIP-7928): Provides clients with advance information regarding which accounts and storage locations a block will touch, enabling parallel disk reads, transaction processing, and state calculations.
- Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS): Reorganizes block construction and validation to help process more data on layer-1 without sharply increasing validator workloads.
- State-Growth Controls (EIP-8037): Alters the economics of permanent state creation, targeting roughly 120 GiB of annual state growth even as the gas limit scales toward 200 million.
- Longer-Term zkEVM Verification: Designed to allow validators to verify cryptographic proofs instead of re-executing every transaction.
Additionally, the upgrade will include gas repricings via EIP-8037 and EIP-8038 that shift state creation and access costs. The Ethereum Foundation noted that while most contracts will remain unaffected, a small set relying on specific state creation patterns may require updates to avoid breaking or degrading.
Impact on Decentralized Exchanges and Rollups
Industry leaders note that decentralized exchanges will serve as a key test for the upgrade. Decentralized trading platforms demand fast execution, deep liquidity, and low costs. Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, highlighted the importance of maintaining decentralization while offering speed and avoiding high costs as regulators increasingly engage with decentralized exchanges.
Meanwhile, the relationship between layer-1 and layer-2 networks may also evolve. Fernando Lillo Aranda, CMO at Zoomex, suggests that stronger layer-1 performance could reduce pressure driving the adoption of rollups for certain applications, allowing them to deploy directly on the base layer for a simpler user experience. However, rollups and app-specific chains will continue to provide customization, dedicated execution environments, lower latency, and greater control over fees and governance.
