Ethereum's Glamsterdam upgrade locks devnet scope around enshrined proposer-builder separation and a 200m gas target

What happened

Ethereum developers finalised the devnet-0 specification for Glamsterdam in June 2026, clearing the upgrade to progress to public testnets. Reporting on 17 June 2026 described ten proposals in the bundle. The two structural changes are EIP-7732, which writes proposer-builder separation into the protocol rather than leaving it to out-of-protocol relays, and EIP-7928, block-level access lists, which supply an upfront map of the state each transaction touches so that unrelated transactions can be executed in parallel. Together they target a gas limit floor of 200 million, roughly three times the current range. Smaller items include EIP-7708, which logs plain ETH transfers, and EIP-2780, which lowers the intrinsic gas floor for transactions. Analysts extrapolating from historical testnet seasoning periods of two to four months placed mainnet activation between September and December 2026. No activation date had been set as of 25 July 2026.

Why it matters

Enshrined proposer-builder separation changes the industrial organisation of Ethereum block production. Today block building is concentrated in a small number of builders that reach validators through relays operating outside the protocol; moving the auction into consensus alters who bears censorship and liveness risk and how builder revenue is competed away. The gas limit target is the economics question. Tripling throughput lowers the fee per transaction and therefore the fee revenue burned under EIP-1559, which affects ETH issuance net of burn. Whether validator economics hold at 200 million gas depends on how much of the extra capacity is actually demanded.

What is not settled

No mainnet activation date has been set, and the final gas limit will be chosen by validators after the upgrade rather than fixed by the specification.