Ethereum developers have scheduled the Glamsterdam network upgrade for activation on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, marking another major testing milestone before the changes eventually reach Ethereum mainnet.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, Sepolia's Glamsterdam activation is expected at epoch 293427, around 08:55 UTC, although the exact time can vary slightly depending on network conditions.
Node operators participating in Sepolia must update their execution and consensus clients to compatible versions before the activation. Regular ETH holders do not need to take any action, and the Foundation warns users that ETH on testnets has no real-world value.
The testnet deployment will give developers an opportunity to examine how applications behave under Glamsterdam's changes before a mainnet activation date is finalized.
Ethereum Changes How Some Operations Are Priced
One important part of Glamsterdam involves repricing operations that create or access Ethereum's state.
Ethereum nodes must permanently maintain information created by activities such as deploying contracts, creating accounts and adding new storage. As network activity increases, so does the burden associated with maintaining this growing state.
EIP-8037 introduces separate accounting for state creation costs, while EIP-8038 adjusts pricing for operations that access and modify existing state.
As a result, applications that create substantial amounts of storage could experience different gas requirements after the upgrade.
However, the changes should not be interpreted as meaning that every Ethereum transaction will become more expensive or cheaper.
Standard ETH Transfers Remain at 21,000 Gas
For a straightforward ETH transfer to an existing externally owned account, the base transaction cost remains 21,000 execution gas.
Gas consumption and the amount a user ultimately pays are two separate concepts. Ethereum fees depend on both the gas consumed by a transaction and the price paid for each unit of gas.
Network demand therefore continues to influence the final cost.
Glamsterdam aims to enable greater network capacity, which could reduce competition for blockspace under some conditions. At the same time, repriced operations involving state creation or access could consume more gas.
The actual impact will consequently depend on what a particular transaction or smart contract is doing.
Glamsterdam Prepares Ethereum for More Capacity
The repricing changes are part of a broader effort to allow Ethereum to process more activity without creating unsustainable demands on nodes.
Increasing execution capacity means nodes must handle more transactions, more data and more state access within each block.
Glamsterdam introduces changes to block processing and execution that are intended to give Ethereum more room to scale while keeping resource-intensive operations appropriately priced.
Among its major changes is EIP-7732, Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation, which separates execution payload validation from consensus processing. This restructuring gives validators additional time to process larger blocks and is expected to support further increases in Ethereum's gas limit.
Another major proposal, EIP-7928, introduces block-level access lists that provide information about which accounts and storage locations transactions will access. This can help clients process parts of block execution more efficiently.
Some Smart Contracts Could Need Attention
Gas repricing creates a particular risk for applications that use hardcoded internal gas limits.
If a smart contract allocates a fixed amount of gas to an operation and Glamsterdam makes that operation more expensive, the call could fail even when the user raises the overall gas limit for the transaction.
The Ethereum Foundation has already conducted a repricing impact analysis using historical mainnet transactions. Its testing found that the vast majority continued producing the same outcome under the proposed pricing rules.
Some affected transactions succeeded after their supplied gas limit was increased. A smaller group remained potentially incompatible even after receiving substantially more gas.
Developers can use the Foundation's affected-contract tools to identify addresses and investigate potential failures before mainnet activation.
Wallets and transaction services may also need to update their gas-estimation logic rather than relying on assumptions based on Ethereum's current pricing.
The October 6 Sepolia activation will therefore serve as an important real-world test of Glamsterdam's block-processing and gas-accounting changes. Once developers evaluate the results, attention can turn toward determining when the upgrade is ready for Ethereum mainnet.
