Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade Targets 10,000 TPS and 78% Lower Fees

Ethereum's Most Significant Protocol Upgrade in Years

Ethereum's Glamsterdam hard fork is taking shape as one of the most consequential protocol upgrades since the transition to proof of stake. Scheduled tentatively for the first half of 2026 — with June as the current target — Glamsterdam bundles a set of changes that collectively address the core scalability and fee constraints that have limited Ethereum's real-world throughput for years.

The Ethereum Foundation's DevOps team has already validated three of the core EIPs on Devnet-4 and is transitioning to Devnet-5, indicating the upgrade is progressing through normal development stages on schedule.

The Two Headline EIPs

Glamsterdam is built around two core improvements that represent the deepest changes to Ethereum block processing since the merge:

**EIP-7732: Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS)** operates at the consensus layer and formalizes the separation between block proposers and block builders directly in the protocol. Today's PBS implementation relies on external MEV relays, introducing trust assumptions that ePBS eliminates. By bringing PBS into the protocol, Glamsterdam creates a more credibly neutral and censorship-resistant base layer for transaction ordering — meaningful for DeFi protocols and institutional participants who care about execution fairness and predictable ordering.

**EIP-7928: Block-Level Access Lists** operates at the execution layer, enabling more efficient parallelization of transaction processing by declaring upfront which state a transaction will touch. This is one of the key enablers for hitting higher throughput targets without requiring larger block sizes or sacrificing verification decentralization.

Gas Limit, Throughput, and What Fees Will Look Like

The Glamsterdam upgrade includes a phased gas limit increase from the current 60 million to a target of 200 million per block:

- **Phase 1**: 100 million gas limit (initial activation)

- **Phase 2**: 200 million gas limit (once ePBS is fully operational)

The 200M gas limit, combined with a package of gas repricing EIPs, is projected to push Ethereum's throughput toward 10,000 transactions per second and reduce fees by approximately 78% compared to current levels. In concrete terms: what costs $8 in gas today could cost under $2 after Glamsterdam.

What This Means for DeFi

For DeFi protocols, the fee reduction is the most immediately impactful outcome. Lower fees make smaller transactions economically viable — micro-payments, frequent on-chain interactions, and smaller-value DeFi positions that are currently uneconomical due to gas costs become realistic again. The expanded throughput also means the network can handle more concurrent activity before fees spike, improving the base experience during periods of high demand.

The ePBS implementation matters for long-term ecosystem health: reducing reliance on external MEV infrastructure makes Ethereum's block production process more transparent, more decentralized, and harder to exploit.

Current Development Status and Key Milestones

With Devnet-5 testing beginning, the June timeline is tracking well. The milestones to watch before mainnet activation: successful Devnet-5 multi-client testing, a public testnet deployment, and client team signaling for mainnet readiness. If development holds, Glamsterdam is on pace to be one of the most impactful Ethereum upgrades for everyday users — making transactions meaningfully cheaper and the network meaningfully faster.

Sources: Phemex Glamsterdam Explainer (April 2026), Bitfinex Blog (April 2026), KuCoin Ethereum 2026 Upgrade Guide (April 2026), CCN Education (April 2026), Ethereum Foundation Protocol Priority Update (2026)