The upgrade activated on Sepolia on schedule, and the limit on computation per block began rising from 60 million. One major client still defaults to the old level, and ether funds posted a fifth straight day of outflows.
Crypto · FinancialMarkets.com · October 6, 2026 · Tickers: ETH, ETHA, FETH
Ethereum's next major upgrade passed its first public milestone on Tuesday. Its headline feature is arriving more slowly than the shorthand suggests.
Glamsterdam activated on the Sepolia test network at 13:53 UTC, or 9:53 a.m. Eastern, as scheduled. The upgrade bundles 18 core Ethereum Improvement Proposals and seven others. Sepolia is a testnet, so no ether or user funds on the main Ethereum network are affected. Mainnet activation has not been scheduled.
The gas limit
The change drawing the most attention is a higher gas limit, the cap on how much computation each block can hold, with a target of 200 million. A higher limit lets each block process more transactions, which can lower fees when demand is high.
The limit does not jump when the upgrade activates. Validators raise it gradually, and each block can increase it by at most 1/1024 of the previous limit, about 58,600 units at 60 million. A block-by-block count of the network after activation found the limit at 60 million before the fork, about 60.6 million five minutes later and about 64.2 million roughly an hour after. The average increase was about 18,600 units per block, roughly a third of the maximum.
At that pace, reaching 200 million would take about a day. If every block raised the limit by the full amount allowed, it would take about four hours. The gap between the two paces largely reflects how many block proposers are signaling the higher target.
Client defaults
Software matters here. Two consensus clients, Prysm 7.2.0 and Teku 26.9.1, default to a 60 million gas limit after activation unless operators change their settings, the Ethereum Foundation said in September. Prysm released version 7.2.1 to fix that default. As of Tuesday morning, 26.9.1 was still Teku's latest release. Validators running Teku without changing the setting would keep signaling 60 million, slowing the climb.
The fund flows
The upgrade's progress comes during a stretch of selling in ether funds. U.S. spot ether ETFs had net outflows of $50.8 million on Monday, including $31.9 million from BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust and $18.9 million from Fidelity's fund. That was the fifth straight day of withdrawals, bringing the total since Sept. 29 to about $206 million. Ether traded near $2,700 on Tuesday afternoon, down about 0.35%.
What the testnet shows
One reading is that a steady climb and on-schedule activation show validators are ready for the higher limit, which would support moving to the next testnet. Another is that the rollout still depends on operators updating clients by hand, and that a ramp that stalls short of 200 million would show the coordination problem is not solved.
Next steps
Whether Sepolia reaches and holds 200 million with stable block finalization is the first test. Developers' choice of a date for the Hoodi testnet, the next stage before mainnet, will show how they read the results.