Ethereum turns 11 with its biggest upgrade yet to come

On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum genesis block went live. Eleven years on, @ethereum is still building, and the next chapter may be its most consequential yet.

A Decade-Plus of Transformation

What began as an ambitious vision of a programmable blockchain has grown into the settlement layer for billions of dollars in tokenized assets and the backbone of decentralized finance. Ethereum's 11th year was also marked by significant internal change at the Ethereum Foundation, including leadership shifts, a new organizational mandate, and the spinout of several subsidiaries as the Foundation sought to decentralize its own role in the ecosystem. Despite the upheaval, the network's technical progress continued, with the Fusaka upgrade shipping successfully and more than $11 billion in cumulative inflows recorded into U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs.

Glamsterdam: The Biggest Protocol Shift Since the Merge

The next milestone is Glamsterdam, widely described as the largest protocol change since the Merge. The upgrade ships ten Ethereum Improvement Proposals and centers on two headline changes. The first is EIP-7732, which enshrines Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS) directly into the protocol, removing reliance on off-chain relays and giving the network more time to process larger blocks safely. The second is EIP-7928, which introduces Block-Level Access Lists so validators can process unrelated transactions in parallel.

Together, these changes clear the path for a 200 million gas limit floor, a more than threefold increase from the current cap of approximately 60 million. That higher ceiling, combined with a gas repricing package projected to cut L1 fees by roughly 78.6%, is expected to push throughput toward 10,000 transactions per second.

Glamsterdam has entered its final devnet phase with ten EIPs locked in. Public testnet activation on Holesky and Hoodi is expected to follow, with mainnet targeted for the second half of 2026. Based on the two-to-four month testnet seasoning seen in past forks, mainnet activation could land between September and December 2026.

For layer-2 networks, the upgrade also widens the blob propagation window, expanding the data-availability budget that rollups draw from, continuing the direction set by the Fusaka upgrade. Work on the next hard fork after Glamsterdam, called Hegota, is already underway.

Happy Birthday @ethereum. The next chapter is already shipping.

Sources:
The Defiant: Ethereum's Glamsterdam Upgrade Enters Final Devnet Phase
CoinDesk: Ethereum Enters Its Second Decade
CoinMarketCap: Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Details