Ethereum Network to Undergo Major Speed Upgrade Test on October 6

The Ethereum network plans to launch its Glamsterdam update on the Sepolia testnet on October 6 at 13:53:36 UTC, bringing its upcoming scaling solution closer to being tested on a live network. The Ethereum Foundation confirmed that the activation of Glamsterdam will take place during epoch 353,024 and slot 11,296,768. The launch dates of Hoodi and mainnet are yet to be decided. Therefore, the October 6 update applies to Sepolia only. This particular upgrade comprises updates known as Amsterdam on Ethereum's execution layer and Gloas on the consensus layer.

EIP-7732 Will Bring Block Builder Payments Into Ethereum's Protocol

As per the announcement, its largest changes include alterations to block building, block validation, and state handling by clients while processing transactions. Operators of nodes in Sepolia must have the appropriate version of both their execution and consensus clients before activation. ETH users and Ethereum mainnet users don't have anything to do about the Sepolia upgrade for the following reason. Glamsterdam adds enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS for short, via EIP-7732. This update brings the relationship between block proposers and block builders to the Ethereum protocol level.

In today's day and age, most block builders will build the execution payload and communicate with the validators via external means. In ePBS, the proposer will include the commitment by the block builder for the execution payload. The transaction is then processed by the Ethereum protocol to handle the payment made by the builder to the proposer. According to the Ethereum Foundation, the architecture helps eliminate the need for trustware middleware for block builder payments, while separating consensus validation from execution validation. 

Another important element is going to be added to Glamsterdam through EIP-7928, which creates block-level access lists. The lists will keep track of the accounts and storage keys used within a block, as well as the state transitions caused by transactions. This would allow Ethereum clients to read state off the disk and put some of the work into the validation process of transactions, while optimising the state root computation. As per the official roadmap, Glamsterdam is an update aimed at preparing Ethereum for higher Layer-1 capacity.

The next public testnet phase will be Hoodi if the Sepolia phase works as planned. The development meeting notes mention October 27 as a tentative Hoodi launch. Although discussions about whether or not Hoodi should be launched are slated for after the Sepolia phase, the Foundation has not scheduled Hoodi yet. Post-Glamsterdam, Ethereum's timeline points to Hegotá in 2027. The upcoming fork would involve a further series of updates within the blockchain protocol, while developers focus on making preparations for long-term plans related to native account abstraction, improved cryptography, and quantum resistance.