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Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade activated on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, 2026. By October 8, blocks were being produced with a gas limit near 200 million, up from about 60 million before activation—but a CoinDesk sample of more than 25 consecutive blocks used only about 52 million to 92 million gas apiece. That is evidence of a higher configured testnet capacity, not proof of sustained full blocks, three times as many transactions, or a mainnet change.
What changed on Sepolia?
Glamsterdam combines the Amsterdam execution-layer upgrade with the Gloas consensus-layer upgrade. The Ethereum Foundation’s September 28, 2026 Sepolia announcement scheduled activation for October 6 at 13:53:36 UTC; CoinDesk reported that activation occurred as scheduled.
The headline changes are enshrined proposer-builder separation (ePBS) and block-level access lists (BALs), alongside revisions to gas pricing and accounting. The higher gas limit is the capacity configured for a block. It does not mean every block uses that much gas.
ePBS changes how block building fits into consensus
EIP-7732 brings proposer-builder separation into Ethereum’s consensus protocol. The Foundation says this formalizes builder commitments and reveals, handles proposer payment in-protocol, and separates consensus validation from execution validation so validators have more time to validate execution payloads. These are protocol mechanisms intended to support the network’s operation and scaling; they are not themselves a measurement of achieved throughput.
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BALs describe state access within a block
EIP-7928’s block-level access lists record the accounts and storage locations accessed during a block, together with post-transaction state changes. The Foundation says this information can help clients read state from disk in parallel, validate transactions in parallel, and compute state roots more efficiently.
Gas repricing changes the cost of work
Other Glamsterdam changes adjust how certain resource costs are counted. EIP-8037 separately meters state creation costs, while EIP-8038 updates state-access costs. Additional changes affect intrinsic transaction gas, calldata, access lists, and block accounting. The stated aim is to make gas accounting better reflect resource use and long-term state growth.
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How much gas did the early Sepolia blocks use?
CoinDesk’s October 8, 2026 report found that the early post-upgrade Sepolia block gas limit was near 200 million, compared with about 60 million before activation. In its sample of more than 25 consecutive blocks, actual use ranged from roughly 52 million to 92 million gas—about 26% to 46% of the available limit. None of the sampled blocks was close to full. These figures are CoinDesk’s short observed sample, not an official benchmark or a prolonged saturated-load test.
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Does a 200 million gas limit mean three times as many transactions?
No. A gas limit near 200 million is roughly three times the former limit of about 60 million, but that ratio applies to the configured gas budget, not automatically to transaction counts. Transactions consume different amounts of gas, and Glamsterdam changes the gas costs of some operations. The number of transactions that fit in a block therefore depends on their contents and the applicable gas schedule, as well as the limit.
The early Sepolia sample also cannot establish how much activity the network could sustain if blocks were consistently near capacity. It shows a higher configured limit and observed blocks using less than half of it—not a measured threefold increase in throughput.
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When is Glamsterdam coming to Ethereum mainnet?
There is no confirmed mainnet activation date in the cited Foundation announcement. As of the September 28, 2026 schedule, Hoodi and mainnet dates were still to be determined. Ethereum.org’s August 6 roadmap listed Q4 2026 as an expected mainnet window, but that is a roadmap expectation, not a scheduled date. Sepolia’s activation and measurements should not be described as a mainnet result.
What the early testnet signals do—and do not—show
CoinDesk separately reported, citing the ethPandaOps explorer, that all 32 scheduled blocks were proposed and 99.97% of eligible testnet stake voted toward finality during a six-minute voting period. That brief observation is distinct from its gas-use sample and is not evidence of long-term reliability or sustained performance.
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ePBS, BALs, and the gas-accounting changes are intended to make higher capacity more practical. Whether Sepolia can maintain full blocks over a prolonged period is not established by the early measurements, and those measurements do not establish a mainnet gas limit.
What developers and node operators should check
Smart-contract maintainers
The Ethereum Foundation’s August 24, 2026 repricing guide says its replay of historical mainnet transactions found the large majority unaffected, but some contracts may rely on assumptions changed by the new gas schedule. Review contracts that use fixed gas stipends—such as Solidity transfer or send with 2,300 gas—hardcoded call-gas values, branches based on gasleft(), or presigned transactions with fixed gas limits. The Foundation recommends checking its affected-contracts tool, increasing supplied gas limits where that resolves failures, and testing potentially affected paths on the Glamsterdam devnet.
Wallet, RPC, and node-tooling developers
Update gas estimation where cached gas constants may underestimate costs. The repricing guide says regular users need take no action when they use updated wallets and infrastructure.
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The Foundation’s Sepolia announcement says operators need compatible execution- and consensus-layer clients. It also notes that some validator configurations default to a 60 million gas limit after activation; proposing at 200 million requires setting that limit explicitly. Client releases and configuration details can change, so use the live Foundation announcement for current operational guidance.
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