TL;DR
- Glamsterdam = Glasgow (execution layer) + Amsterdam (consensus layer) hard-fork, targeting mainnet in H2 2026 (currently aiming for Q3).
- Two headline changes: EIP-7732 (enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation) on the consensus layer and EIP-7928 (Block-Level Access Lists) on the execution layer.
- Together with a cluster of gas-repricing EIPs (EIP-7778, EIP-7976, EIP-7981, EIP-8037), the upgrade is designed to safely raise Ethereum's gas limit toward a target floor of 200M — roughly 3.3x today's 60M.
- A significantly shorter exit queue (EIP-8061) is being tested on devnets and is on track for the fork.
- For Kiln customers: nothing to do. We handle all node and infrastructure upgrades.
What is Glamsterdam?
Following the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, Glamsterdam is the next major Ethereum hard fork, targeted for Q3 2026.
The latest Ethereum core-developer interop, held in early May 2026, ended with a stable multi-client Glamsterdam devnet running the latest ePBS, repricing, and Block-Level Access List specs; public testnet activations (Sepolia, Hoodi) remain on the horizon, though several steps are still needed first: specs are still being refined, all client implementations will need to align, and additional devnets will follow before testnet activation. Non-protocol components such as remote signers are also in progress.
This upgrade pursues three goals:
- Rework of the MEV pipeline
- Scaling Ethereum L1: better pipelining of slots, parallelized block validation (Block-Level Access Lists), and a repricing of state-related gas costs
- Improving the staker experience: a shortened exit queue.
Core Features
- EIP-7732 - Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS): Moves block building directly into the protocol layer. This adds a native alternative to external relays (like MEV-Boost), increasing decentralization and allowing validators to safely outsource block assembly.
- EIP-7928 — Block-Level Access Lists (BALs): every block carries an enforced list of all accounts and storage slots it touches, together with their post-execution values. BALs do not make the EVM itself faster — they make block validation faster: clients can prefetch all required state and execute non-conflicting transactions in parallel instead of one by one, dramatically reducing the time the slowest nodes need to validate a block.
- Gas repricing cluster (EIP-7778, EIP-7976, EIP-7981, EIP-8037): refunds no longer count toward the block gas limit, calldata and access lists are repriced to cap worst-case block sizes, and state-creation costs increase to curb state growth. These changes remove the bottlenecks that currently make raising the gas limit risky.
- EIP-8061 - Increase exit and consolidation churn: increases the number of validators that can exit or consolidate by epoch. This will reduce in general the exit queue time.
Target Mainnet Activation: Q3 2026
EIP-7732 - Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS)
This EIP introduces a new entity in the Ethereum consensus: the builder, represented by a new type of validator with 0x03 withdrawal credential type. Unlike classic validators, builders do not participate in the attestation or block selection, they instead publish bid values for blocks they have, and when selected by a validator and observed by a new committee ( PTC for Payload Timeliness Committee, 512 validators per slot), they publish their block.
Payment is enforced by the protocol: the bid value is deducted from the builder's beacon-chain balance and paid out as a withdrawal to the proposer's chosen address. This withdrawal takes the first position in the withdrawal ordering, ahead of validator partial withdrawals. The proposer no longer needs to trust a relay to get paid.
Why ePBS matters: pipelining the slot
Today, a validator has roughly 4 seconds to download and verify a full block — consensus and execution together — before attesting. The remaining 8 seconds of the slot contribute nothing to throughput. This 4-second window is one of the main constraints on the gas limit.
ePBS splits consensus from execution within the slot: attesters validate only the consensus part in the first seconds, while execution payload verification and blob propagation can use the rest of the slot. Combined with Block-Level Access Lists parallelizing block validation, this is what underpins the 200M gas limit target described above — the core scalability story of Glamsterdam.
Two markets, plus a backward-compatible path
ePBS introduces two complementary markets alongside today's relay-centric auction, though adoption will depend on whether the ePBS path proves competitive in practice:
- A P2P market: builders gossip bids over a public network. Payment is trustless — guaranteed by the protocol. To protect the network, each builder can broadcast only about one bid per slot (a second is accepted only if it bids higher). Anyone with the required stake can participate, without running public RPC infrastructure.
- An RPC market: proposers request bids directly from builders they choose, much like MEV-Boost today. These exchanges are private and effectively sealed-bid, which removes most of the latency advantage that sophisticated builders enjoy in today's public bidding ladders. Payment here can use a separate `execution_payment` field — a trusted, execution-layer transfer that keeps today's relay-style arrangements working.
The protocol also explicitly supports self-building: a proposer can skip the auction entirely and build locally.
The entire new pipeline can be bypassed by validators and it is likely that the landscape will use a bypass and have ePBS as a fallback: the reason for this is the value of blocks perceived by validators today is driven by the efficiency of the PBS auction. In a typical PBS auction there can be 10 000 bids from different builders before the price is selected by the validator. The ePBS auction won’t support this kind of load because:
- Bids need to be seen by the PTC which increases the latency requirements and throughput,
- The latency makes it not possible for a builder to quickly outbid the current auction.
As a result of this, the ePBS path may propose less valuable blocks in its current form though recent research from Flashbots suggests the gap could close or reverse as the auction mechanism matures
While some argue that enshrining PBS adds protocol complexity for what may remain a bypass mode, two things weigh in its favor. First, the pipeline benefits — the consensus/execution split within the slot that unlocks the gas limit increases — ship regardless of which market proposers use. Second, it gives proposers genuinely more options: local blocks, trustless P2P bids, and direct RPC bids, with compliance-driven builder selection moving into the proposer's own configuration rather than relying on a trusted relay
Builder validators use a dedicated index space starting at 1,099,511,627,776, keeping them distinct from regular validators in the beacon chain — though this detail is still being verified against the latest specs.
On track: a shorter exit queue
EIP-8061 (increase exit and consolidation churn) ties exit capacity back to the total amount of ETH staked, raising the exit churn limit from 256 to roughly 1,187 ETH per epoch at current stake levels (~4.6x) and adding dedicated consolidation churn — directly addressing the exit queues that stretched beyond 40 days in 2025.
While the meta-EIP still formally lists it as Considered for Inclusion, consensus-layer teams settled the debate at the May 2026 core-developer interop: a simplified version of EIP-8061 is included and actively tested on Glamsterdam devnets, while the competing proposal (EIP-8080, exits via the consolidation queue) was declined.
Barring devnet surprises, a meaningfully shorter exit queue is on track for Glamsterdam. One second-order effect worth watching: institutional players such as ETF issuers typically factor exit queue length into their risk models. A faster exit queue reduces perceived risk, which could encourage them to stake more — potentially adding pressure to an already significant entry queue.
What changes for ETH stakers?
For Kiln customers: nothing. Kiln will manage all necessary node client upgrades and hard fork preparations. We will provide detailed updates as we approach the activation block.
As a leader in the ecosystem, Kiln consistently delivers performance that outpaces network averages. Our track record of zero slashing events remains our top priority as we transition through this upgrade. If you want to know more about our performance please review our latest performance reports.
About Kiln
Kiln is the leading institutional onchain asset and yield management platform, enabling institutions to generate yield on their digital assets and empower their users with direct access to onchain yield. In 2025, Kiln surpassed $18 billion in assets delegated, providing access to diverse yield sources across 25+ PoS networks from native staking to DeFi strategies.
About Kiln
Kiln is the leading staking and digital asset rewards management platform, enabling institutional customers to earn rewards on their digital assets, or to whitelabel earning functionality into their products. Kiln runs validators on all major PoS blockchains, with over $11 billion in crypto assets being programmatically staked and running over 5% of the Ethereum network on a multi-client, multi-cloud, and multi-region infrastructure. Kiln also provides a validator-agnostic suite of products for fully automated deployment of validators and reporting and commission management, enabling custodians, wallets, and exchanges to streamline staking or DeFi operations across providers. Kiln is SOC2 Type 2 certified.
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