The upgrade is shaping up to be one of Ethereum’s most ambitious since the network’s transition to proof-of-stake in 2022. Jayanthi described Glamsterdam as “probably the largest fork we’ve had since the Merge,” adding that it will “change a lot of assumptions about Ethereum and set us up for much more scaling in the future.”
Among the headline features are enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), formally tracked as EIP-7732, and Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928).
ePBS would bring into Ethereum’s core protocol a separation between the entities that build transaction blocks and those that propose them. Today, that process largely relies offchain, where there are additional trust assumptions and centralization concerns. By moving the mechanism onchain, developers hope to reduce opportunities for manipulation related to maximal extractable value, or MEV.
Another major proposal, Block-level Access Lists, would allow blocks to declare in advance which accounts and smart-contract data they intend to access. The change would enable Ethereum clients to preload information more efficiently, helping make block execution faster, more predictable and easier to optimize.
Beyond those headline proposals, Glamsterdam also includes a sweeping set of gas repricings that could significantly alter the economics of using Ethereum.
“This will majorly change the cost of actions on Ethereum. High-level compute gets cheaper and state gets more expensive.”