Ethereum’s next major upgrade has another date on the calendar, though it is not a mainnet launch. Developers have scheduled Glamsterdam to activate on the Hoodi test network on October 26, another step in testing changes to how Ethereum produces blocks and accounts for execution costs. TL;DR: Glamsterdam is scheduled for Hoodi at 17:42:48 UTC on October 26. The testnet’s gas limit will rise to 200 million at the same time, but Ethereum has not announced a mainnet activation date. The Ethereum Foundation says the upgrade will activate at Hoodi epoch 132,352, slot 4,235,264. It follows the upgrade’s October 6 activation on Sepolia, giving developers another environment to check software compatibility before choosing a date for the main chain. Two changes are at the heart of Glamsterdam. Enshrined proposer-builder separation, or ePBS, moves the relationship between block proposers and builders into Ethereum’s protocol instead of relying so heavily on outside arrangements. Block-level access lists are intended to make it easier for clients to process and validate parts of a block in parallel. The upgrade also changes gas accounting, including how Ethereum charges for state creation and access. That matters to application developers whose contracts or tools rely on fixed assumptions about gas costs. Validators and node operators on Hoodi, meanwhile, will need compatible execution and consensus clients before the activation. A 200-million gas limit on a test network is an important engineering milestone, not a promise that mainnet capacity will instantly quadruple. The Hoodi exercise will help determine whether the planned changes behave as expected under real operating conditions. Mainnet users have no action to take yet. Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs Ethereums October 26 Hoodi Test for Glamsterdam and the 200M Gas Limit
1 What is the Hoodi test on October 26
Its a testnet run on Hoodi one of Ethereums test networks where developers trial the Glamsterdam upgrade before it goes live on mainnet Think of it as a dress rehearsal
2 What is the Glamsterdam upgrade
Its Ethereums next major upgrade combining work from Gloas and Amsterdam The name is a mashup of the two
3 What is a gas limit
Gas measures computational effort on Ethereum The gas limit is the maximum gas allowed per block it caps how much work a block can contain
4 What does 200M gas limit mean
It means blocks could handle up to 200 million gas roughly several times todays limits Bigger blocks mean more transactions per block and potentially lower fees
5 Why is the 200M gas limit a big deal
Its a major step up in capacity It could boost throughput and reduce congestion but it also stresses nodes bandwidth and state growth which is exactly why its being tested carefully
6 Why test on Hoodi instead of mainnet
Testnets let developers find bugs without risking real funds Hoodi is one of Ethereums current longterm testnets used for staking and upgrade rehearsals
7 What happens if the test fails
Developers diagnose the issues patch clients and rerun tests A failed testnet run delays the mainnet schedule but doesnt affect real users funds
8 Do I need to do anything as a regular user
No Testnet tests dont affect mainnet ETH or your wallets Just stay tuned for official announcements about mainnet timing
9 I run a node should I care
Yes Higher gas limits mean more CPU memory bandwidth and disk usage Watch client release notes and test your setup on Hoodi if you can
10 What problems might show up during the test
Common ones include client incompatibilities missed slots sync issues blocks taking longer to propagate and state growth