Ethereum to test 200M gas on Sepolia with Glamsterdam

Ethereum will test a 200 million gas preference on the Sepolia testnet when the Glamsterdam upgrade activates on Oct. 6 at 13:53:36 UTC. Node operators must update both execution and consensus clients, and stakers must upgrade beacon node and validator software ahead of the activation.

Client releases that support Glamsterdam include Prysm 7.2.0 and Teku 26.9.1, but those clients will not adopt the 200 million preference automatically. Prysm operators must enable version 2 proposer settings or set the higher preference via the keymanager API. Teku validators must override the default through their validator configuration. Installing compatible software alone will not guarantee Sepolia blocks immediately reflect the 200 million target.

The test uses the optional gas-limit schedule in EIP-8261. That schedule lets consensus clients coordinate recommended gas preferences at specific epochs without changing consensus-validity rules. Blocks remain valid whether their gas limit is above or below the scheduled value, and individual validators retain the ability to set their own gas-limit preference. Sepolia’s gas limit will therefore rise gradually as validators propose blocks with different preferences rather than jumping to 200 million at activation.

Glamsterdam pairs execution-layer changes from Amsterdam with the Gloas consensus update. The upgrade enshrines proposer-builder separation for block construction and adds block-level access lists to allow clients to parallelize state reads and transaction validation. Client teams have added a per-transaction cap: Fusaka releases include a 16.7 million gas limit on individual transactions to prevent one operation from using a large share of an expanded block budget.

Sepolia is the first scheduled test of Glamsterdam; activation dates for other testnets such as Hoodi and for mainnet have not been set. Guidance from the Ethereum Foundation explains the opt-in requirement and the mechanics of the gas-limit schedule. Ethereum developers plan to monitor how many validators opt in and how quickly realized block gas limits rise on Sepolia before proposing activation on additional networks.