Glamsterdam Nears Final Devnet Launch

Plus: ACDE #241 call summary and Base's pivot from social to financial apps 🌙

Jul 17, 2026

Good evening,

Tonight, I’m discussing updates on the readiness of the Glamsterdam upgrade from the two most recent All Core Developers (ACD) calls, ACDE #241 and ACDT #87.

At a high level, developers have confirmed that their next devnet, Glamsterdam-Devnet-8, will likely be the last before public testnet upgrades. While it’s still too early to say with confidence when Glamsterdam will be ready for mainnet, Ethereum stakeholders, especially application developers, are encouraged to start preparing for the upgrade now.

Let’s get into it.

Yours truly,

Christine D. Kim

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The shot 🥛

The chaser 🍪

On today’s All Core Developers (ACD) call, developers confirmed that the next devnet launch, Glamsterdam-Devnet-8, will likely be the last of its kind before developers move on to upgrading public Ethereum testnets.

Public testnet upgrades are the final milestones in development before an upgrade is considered ready for activation on Ethereum mainnet. There are two public testnets, Sepolia and Hoodi, which developers have said they ideally want to schedule at least two weeks apart to allow sufficient time for testing on these networks.

Given the chaotic state of the most recent Glamsterdam-Devnet-7 launch, developers will likely spend the rest of this month ironing out kinks in client software and conducting one more practice run on Devnet-8 before scheduling the first public testnet upgrade potentially sometime in August.

Glamsterdam timeline estimations

Once scheduled, the public testnets will take at least one month to upgrade, and thereafter, developers ideally want to schedule the mainnet upgrade at least 30 days after the final public testnet upgrade.

So, optimistically speaking, Glamsterdam could be ready for mainnet by late September or October. However, it is too early to say with confidence when Glamsterdam will be ready for mainnet activation, given ongoing client debugging and development work on last-minute additions to the upgrade, such as EIPs 7688 and 8282.

The forthcoming launch of Devnet-8 will be an important indicator of Glamsterdam's readiness for mainnet activation. A date for the final devnet launch has not yet been decided, but based on prior devnet launch timelines, it will likely occur sometime over the next two weeks.

A tentative timeline for Glamsterdam based on the Ethereum protocol process document and the current testing status of Glamsterdam-Devnet-7:

July 14, Glamsterdam-Devnet-7 launch (completed)
July 28, Glamsterdam-Devnet-8 launch (tentative)
August 11, Finalization of client testnet releases for public testnet launches (tentative)
August 25, Sepolia testnet upgrade (tentative)
September 8, Hoodi testnet upgrade (tentative)
October 8, Ethereum mainnet upgrade (tentative)

What the ecosystem needs to know

As developers continue to work on stable versions of Glamsterdam ready for public testnet deployments, the broader Ethereum ecosystem is encouraged to begin preparing for another network-wide upgrade.

First, application developers are encouraged to begin testing their code alongside Glamsterdam code changes on Devnet-7. As discussed on today’s ACD call, there will be no separate short-lived testnet, like Mekong, created specifically for application testing. Applications can test on Devnet-7 now and on Sepolia and Hoodi once these public testnets have been upgraded.

Second, protocol developers are testing a 300 million block gas limit on Devnet-7, which is higher than what was initially anticipated for Glamsterdam when developers did their benchmarking analysis back in May. If testing goes smoothly on Devnet-7 and Devnet-8, Glamsterdam may result in a 4x scalability boost to Ethereum.

The final numbers for the block gas limit are still subject to change, but if testing goes according to plan, Glamsterdam may end up unlocking the highest increase in block size the network has ever seen.

For an overview of all the finalized features in the Glamsterdam upgrade, refer to this Google spreadsheet.

Temp check 🗳️

Further reading 🛋️

All Core Developers Execution #241 call summary and transcript (Forkcast)
Ethereum Improvement Proposals for consideration in the Hegota upgrade should be submitted as pull requests that update EIP-8081. The deadline for Hegota submissions is August 6. (GitHub)
Application developers are encouraged to begin testing their apps against Glamsterdam code changes on Devnet-7. (Network Details, EthPandaOps)
Developers can request devnet tokens using the Glamsterdam-Devnet-7 faucet. (Faucet, EthPandaOps)
Ethereum Foundation Researcher Ben Edgington shares ecosystem survey results on the topic of fast finality (Blog, Ethereum Foundation)
Ethereum Foundation Researchers Francesco D’Amato and Tyler Holmes resign from their roles. D’Amato will be joining EthLabs. Holmes has not yet announced his next role. (X, fradamt, 0xTylerHolmes)
Ethereum Foundation’s Institutional Privacy Task Force spins out as its own for-profit company, EthSystems. (X, eth_systems)
Jesse Pollack, creator of Coinbase’s Layer-2 protocol Base, announces a new direction for Base, pivoting away from the protocol’s focus on social applications to financial ones. (X, jessepollak)
Decentralized prediction market platform Pascal announces a $9 million Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures. (X, pascaldottrade)
Lorenzo Valente, Director of Research at Ark Invest, breaks down the fee revenue of Robinhood’s Layer-2 chain since its inception. (X, LorenzoARK)

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