Ethereum
Ethereum’s latest rehearsal for the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade has continued confirming blocks after adopting new block-building rules, clearing a key test ahead of a proposed October 6 rollout on the Sepolia public test network.
Nethermind, an Ethereum client used by network operators, completed a performance test covering one of Glamsterdam’s major changes. The client completed all 2,302 tests while processing 570.7 billion gas in three minutes and 15 seconds, averaging about 2.9 billion gas per second.
The benchmark measured Nethermind’s execution software rather than the speed of the full Ethereum network. It focused on block-level access lists, which allow Ethereum computers to know in advance which accounts and stored data a block will use. This can let them fetch data and process unrelated transactions concurrently rather than handling much of the workload sequentially.
The Glamsterdam testnet also raised its block gas limit from 60 million to 200 million about an hour after going live. A higher gas ceiling would allow more transactions and other activity to fit into each block, potentially increasing Ethereum’s capacity during periods of heavy demand.
However, larger blocks also require more resources to process and verify, creating a trade-off between capacity and the ability of smaller operators to keep up. Glamsterdam is designed to address that challenge while also changing how specialized block builders, validators and block data propagation interact within Ethereum’s rules.
The upgrade would extend the time available to distribute block data across the network from roughly two seconds to nine seconds, giving validators more time to receive and verify larger blocks. For now, the 200 million gas limit remains a test setting rather than a confirmed mainnet target, while Devnet-11 serves as a controlled rehearsal rather than a full test of adversarial network conditions.
