Author: Ethereum Foundation
Compiled by: Deep Chao TechFlow
Deep Chao Introduction: Ethereum's upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade brings a dual reconstruction of block building methods and Gas pricing. Any wallets, indexers, and estimators with hardcoded maximum Gas limits will crash directly. The Foundation has opened the public testnet in advance, giving developers a window of several months, but this window won't wait.
tl;dr: Meet Platåberget: the early testing ground for the Glamsterdam (Gloas + Amsterdam) upgrade, now open for public participation. This upgrade will bring breaking changes for application developers. It's particularly noteworthy that any tools relying on a hardcoded maximum Gas limit (such as wallets, indexers, and Gas estimators) will break and need updates. Please use this early opportunity to test!
Platåberget is a short-lived testnet aimed at letting the community test the relevant changes. Unlike previous short-lived developer networks, Platåberget is planned to run for several months, providing the community with a stable environment to experience Ethereum post-Glamsterdam, and to get a chance to test and break things before Glamsterdam goes live on the longer-lived testnets Sepolia and Hoodi.
What's in the Glamsterdam Fork
The Glamsterdam upgrade brings significant changes to both the consensus and execution layers. Highlights include:
Protocol-enforced Proposer-Builder Separation: This is a major change to how blocks are built, proposed, and validated, including new builder API processes and PTC (Payload Timeliness) checks. Infrastructure relying on block production and validation pipelines should expect to be affected.
Block-level Access Lists: Introduces mandatory block-level access lists recording accessed state locations and post-transaction changes. Block-level access lists are stored separately from the block body and can be exchanged between execution layer nodes via eth/71.
Gas Repricing: This is a coordinated set of Gas cost changes aiming to raise the Gas floor to approximately 200 million. Any tool with a hardcoded maximum Gas limit will be affected.
Larger Contracts and Initcode: Increases the maximum deployable contract size from 24KiB to 64KiB, and the maximum initialization code size from 48KiB to 128KiB.
Forward-compatible Consensus Data Structures
Platåberget's validator set is relatively small but publicly joinable. Anyone can deposit new validators and test their own validator and builder deposit processes. ePBS is a major change to the consensus layer, and we want to ensure all solo stakers, DVT projects, custom software, and large-scale operators have ample opportunity to test their infrastructure. The Glamsterdam fork on the testnet is scheduled for August 20th, leaving enough time to deposit and prepare for the fork transition.
Another major change in Glamsterdam is Gas repricing. These changes will affect a wider audience as they touch every wallet, indexer, and Gas estimator on the network. Please use this opportunity to figure out which tools or assumptions in your systems will break before the fork goes live on mainnet.
A complete list of included EIPs is tracked in the Glamsterdam meta EIP-7773.
Using Platåberget
Please check the Platåberget resources page for a summary of included EIPs, client support, and launch status; and the devnet-8 specification for network setup, configuration values, bootnodes, and client release information.
The Platåberget page provides a one-click "Add Network" process to configure your EL and CL clients, as well as a faucet providing testnet ETH to cover deposits and Gas fees.
Things to keep in mind when running a node:
The public will be able to submit validator or builder deposits via the Dora explorer
The genesis validator set will not pre-assign auto-staking to a few entities, but will be bootstrapped via public deposits, with some ETH allocated at genesis to help launch.
Client Releases: Releases from clients are optional, please check if your chosen client has included the version.
Client Images
For now, until client teams prepare tagged releases, please use our ethPandaOps container images below.
Consensus Layer
Execution Layer
Support & Feedback
If you find bugs or issues in the specifications, the best feedback channel is the Ethereum R&D Discord server. If you prefer not to use Discord, you can also raise issues in the following specification repositories: Consensus Layer, Execution Layer, execution-apis, builder-specs, and beacon-APIs.
Platåberget gives the community a chance to experience Ethereum after Glamsterdam and start finding issues.
Gas repricing is especially important for application developers: any tools relying on a hardcoded maximum Gas limit (such as wallets, indexers, and Gas estimators) will break and need updates. We want to see dApp and wallet developers testing on Platåberget alongside infrastructure operators; these are the types of changes that most likely catch downstream tools off guard.
The repricing is not just about the block Gas limit: the price of individual operations will also change, and EIP-8037 introduces a separate state Gas dimension for operations that create new state. Creating accounts, deploying code, or writing to new storage slots is now metered at a fixed cost per state byte (CPSB), charged at runtime, not upfront. The practical consequence is that a simple ETH transfer is no longer always a fixed 21,000 Gas: a transfer to an already-existing account still costs 21,000 (now decomposed into TXBASECOST + COLDACCOUNTACCESS + TXVALUECOST), but sending funds to an account that doesn't exist yet will incur an additional state Gas fee at runtime of STATEBYTESPERNEWACCOUNT × CPSB. Anything that assumes 21,000 covers all transfers, or that estimates assuming a single Gas dimension, needs to be revisited: see EIP-2780 for decomposed intrinsic costs, and see EIP-8038 for the increase in state access costs.
Once feedback is incorporated into client software and specifications, a non-finalizing developer network will follow within a month to test extreme consensus scenarios.
After these devnets run stably for a while, the existing long-lived testnets (Sepolia, Hoodi) will undergo the Glamsterdam fork. Once they are upgraded and remain stable, the next step is the transition of the Ethereum mainnet to Glamsterdam 🎊.
For those wanting to track progress more closely, the best channels are the Ethereum R&D Discord server, the All Core Devs calls, the Glamsterdam upgrade tracker, or the EthPandaOps Glamsterdam devnets Github repository.
See you on Platåberget 🐻❄️!
