Glamsterdam fork: what ships and why it matters now
Ethereum’s near-term scaling roadmap centers on the Glamsterdam fork, positioned to harden core protocol economics and throughput while preserving permissionless validation. Vitalik Buterin’s roadmap emphasizes pragmatic upgrades that can land soon at Layer 1, then compound through later forks mapped out for the rest of the decade.
Glamsterdam’s headline consensus change is enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS, EIP-7732), which formalizes the split between proposing and building blocks to curb MEV-driven centralization, as reported by Cointelegraph. The fork also targets measured gas-limit headroom and execution-layer refinements intended to increase capacity without forcing out smaller validators.
Beyond consensus, short-run execution improvements under discussion include block-level access lists (EIP-7928), history expiry, delayed execution (EIP-7886), and groundwork aligned with Verkle Trees to lighten node requirements, according to BlockEden. Together, these efforts aim to reduce state pressure, improve propagation, and prepare clients for sustainable increases in on-chain activity.
Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) remain pivotal for censorship resistance but are currently slated for Hegota rather than Glamsterdam; they are tracked as a stretch goal if specifications and testing align in time, according to InsightsWire. In practice, this sequencing keeps Glamsterdam focused on enshrining builder markets and performance gains, while Hegota advances inclusion guarantees.
Immediate impact for validators, rollups, wallets, and users
For validators, ePBS reshapes responsibilities by standardizing the relay-driven block market and reducing variance in MEV capture. Post-Glamsterdam, a subset of operators may opt into verifying zero-knowledge proofs to safely support higher throughput; said Justin Drake, Ethereum researcher, the share could be around 10%.
Rollups and dapps could see indirect fee relief as execution and data capacity improve, though effects will hinge on client performance and conservative gas-limit increments. Validator communities are broadly supportive of incremental increases provided syncing, storage, and bandwidth remain manageable, as reported by Coinpaper.
Industry observers have characterized the current phase as one of regularized, industrial-grade iteration that reduces timeline uncertainty for operators. “From 2025 to 2026, Ethereum appears to have officially embarked on a highly predictable and institutionalized pace of industrial upgrading,” according to PANewsLab.
At the time of this writing, Ethereum (ETH) trades near $1,947.33 with very high 30-day volatility around 13.63% and neutral RSI near 44, while sentiment screens bearish. Price context does not change protocol timelines, but it frames how risk managers may interpret near-term throughput changes alongside longer-horizon upgrades.
How ePBS (EIP-7732) works and key liveness risks
ePBS codifies how builders assemble execution payloads and how proposers commit to those payloads, narrowing off-protocol bargaining that has concentrated MEV flows. By enshrining roles and timings, the mechanism seeks more transparent auctions, improved censorship resistance when paired with inclusion tooling, and a clearer path to decentralization of block production.
A central open question is the “free option” dynamic for builders: under certain market conditions, they may withhold a committed payload, creating empty or missed blocks that harm liveness. Based on research published on arXiv, such events appear rare in normal conditions (~0.8% of blocks) but can spike materially (up to ~6%) during high volatility, underscoring the need for careful incentives and robust fallback logic.
FOCIL is designed to improve inclusion by letting validators enforce lists of public mempool transactions via fork-choice, reducing room for systematic censorship. While it is scheduled for the Hegota fork and tracked as a stretch for Glamsterdam, its eventual interaction with ePBS is intended to balance fee extraction with timely inclusion when markets are stressed.
Design debates also focus on whether specific ePBS flavors could entrench capital barriers or prematurely limit future flexibility. According to the Sigma Prime engineering blog, variants that increase builder capital requirements risk centralizing block construction and should be weighed against alternatives that keep entry costs low while preserving liveness and censorship resistance.
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