TL;DR
- Ethereum’s Glamsterdam test raised Sepolia’s block gas limit from about 60 million toward 200 million, but sampled blocks used only 26% to 46% of capacity.
- More than 25 consecutive blocks consumed 52 million to 92 million gas, while all 32 scheduled blocks were proposed during a six-minute voting window.
- Hoodi testing is planned for October 27, while mainnet has no activation date and 200 million setting remains a test parameter.
Ethereum is testing more block capacity after Glamsterdam activated on Sepolia, with the testnet’s gas limit moving from 60 million toward 200 million. The Glamsterdam upgrade tracker identifies enshrined proposer-builder separation and Block-Level Access Lists as its headline changes, reshaping how blocks are built, validated and processed. The 200 million figure is a testnet capacity ceiling, not evidence that blocks are already consuming that much gas or that Ethereum mainnet will adopt the same setting. Early post-upgrade blocks remained well below the new maximum.
Sepolia Tests Ethereum’s Higher-Capacity Architecture
More than 25 consecutive Sepolia blocks sampled after activation used roughly 52 million to 92 million gas each, equivalent to about 26% to 46% of available allowance. None approached full capacity, limiting how much the sample can reveal about validator performance under maximum load. The initial results show that Sepolia is successfully producing blocks under the expanded limit, but the test has not yet demonstrated sustained operation near the 200 million-gas ceiling. The distinction matters because the Glamsterdam capacity increase is designed to test more room for payments, swaps and other activity without assuming a proportional increase in transaction throughput.
A separate six-minute voting window provided another stability signal. All 32 scheduled blocks were proposed, while 99.97% of eligible testnet stake voted toward finality. Glamsterdam also changes transaction processing: proposer-builder separation moves the handoff between builders and validators into Ethereum’s protocol, while access lists expose the accounts and stored data transactions will touch so software can fetch information earlier and process unrelated work in parallel. Those architectural changes are central to Ethereum’s effort to increase Layer 1 capacity without treating a larger gas limit as a simple throughput multiplier. They also build on Ethereum’s broader L1 scaling push.
The larger processing budget brings additional demands for nodes and applications. Glamsterdam adjusts charges for creating and accessing stored data, meaning developers have been advised to retest software that assumes gas costs. The next public-test milestone is Hoodi, tentatively planned for October 27 depending on Sepolia results, while no Ethereum mainnet activation date has been set. Sepolia therefore represents a capacity rehearsal rather than a production deployment, with later decisions still dependent on how clients, validators and applications behave under the new rules. That caution reflects earlier warnings around Glamsterdam gas repricing for applications built around older assumptions.
