Summary
- Ethereum researcher Toni Wahrstätter reports progress on Glamsterdam, with Sepolia activation scheduled for October 6 and mainnet timing still undecided.
- Block-Level Access Lists could help Ethereum process independent transactions in parallel and synchronize nodes faster by recording their data dependencies.
- Glamsterdam also targets greater network capacity and sustainable database growth, while proposer-builder separation aims to reduce reliance on external intermediaries.
Ethereum’s Glamsterdam upgrade has reached a critical testing stage, with its planned Sepolia activation set for October 6. Ethereum Foundation researcher Toni Wahrstätter described progress on X as encouraging, particularly for EIP-7928, the proposal for Block-Level Access Lists.
The Sepolia activation is scheduled for October 6 at 13:53 UTC, according to Glamsterdam’s upgrade specification. Developers have not set activation dates for the Hoodi test network or Ethereum mainnet. Those dates depend on decisions by client teams, leaving the wider rollout subject to further testing.
Wahrstätter expects Glamsterdam to rank among Ethereum’s largest upgrades and believes its lengthy development will prove worthwhile. For now, the approaching Sepolia test offers a way to assess that confidence against network performance.
Glamsterdam targets three connected problems as Ethereum seeks greater capacity. Developers want nodes to process work more efficiently, accommodate more activity, and limit the database growth that higher capacity could bring. Each goal affects the hardware and software that operators use to run the network.
Block-Level Access Lists Could Change How Ethereum Nodes Process Transactions
EIP-7928 would give nodes a record of the accounts and storage locations accessed while a block executes. It would also include the resulting changes, allowing nodes to identify work they can handle in parallel. Currently, nodes often process transactions sequentially because they cannot know their dependencies in advance.
Besides supporting parallel processing, the lists could help nodes fetch needed data and update their records more efficiently. Ethereum’s roadmap identifies these changes as steps toward faster validation and easier network synchronization. However, the proposal remains under review, so its planned inclusion still requires successful implementation and testing.
Developers also plan changes to the costs of creating permanent data on Ethereum. Those adjustments aim to keep database growth manageable as capacity increases, protecting the ability to operate nodes on accessible hardware. Glamsterdam’s Sepolia activation will therefore test several related changes, rather than a single scaling feature.
The October 6 test gives developers their next scheduled opportunity to evaluate Glamsterdam on a public network. Its results will help inform subsequent activation decisions, while the mainnet date remains unset.
