The Ethereum upgrade known as Glamsterdam activated on the Sepolia testnet at epoch 353,024 on 6 October, timed at 13:53:36 UTC, exactly where the Ethereum Foundation scheduled it in its 17 September announcement. A reading of the Sepolia beacon chain an hour later put the head at slot 11,297,074, some 306 slots beyond the fork slot of 11,296,768.
The chain did more than survive the transition. Its fork version had moved from 0x90000075 to 0x90000076 at epoch 353,024, and its last finalized epoch stood at 353,031, seven epochs past the fork, with epoch 353,032 justified behind a head at 353,033. Two-epoch finality is what a healthy beacon chain looks like, so the Ethereum upgrade cleared its first public test without a stall.
Sepolia finalized seven epochs past the Glamsterdam fork within an hour. Source: Sepolia beacon node API · Chart: FinanceFeedsEIP-7732 Is the Ethereum Upgrade’s Heaviest Change
The centerpiece is enshrined proposer-builder separation. The Foundation describes EIP-7732 as bringing “the separation between block proposers and builders into Ethereum’s consensus protocol,” where “a proposer includes a builder’s commitment to an execution payload, and the builder subsequently reveals that payload.” Payment to the proposer is handled by the protocol itself, which the post says reduces “reliance on trusted middleware.”
That rewrites validator duties rather than merely adjusting them. A new payload timeliness committee now attests to whether the builder revealed its payload, and whether the blob data arrived on time. The Foundation tells validator operators and builder infrastructure teams to “review the new duties and interfaces before the upgrade,” which is the part of this Ethereum upgrade most likely to catch an unprepared staking setup.
Investor Takeaway
The Ethereum Foundation has set no activation date for either the Hoodi testnet or mainnet, which leaves the release without a public mainnet timetable.
Eighteen EIPs Ship With the Ethereum Upgrade
Eighteen proposals are scheduled in Glamsterdam: EIP-2780, EIP-7688, EIP-7708, EIP-7732, EIP-7778, EIP-7843, EIP-7928, EIP-7954, EIP-7976, EIP-7981, EIP-7997, EIP-8024, EIP-8037, EIP-8038, EIP-8045, EIP-8061, EIP-8246 and EIP-8282.
EIP-7928 is the one with the clearest performance case. It enforces block-level access lists that record which accounts and storage locations a block touches, along with post-transaction state changes. The Foundation says those lists let clients “read state from disk in parallel, validate transactions in parallel, and compute state roots more efficiently.” Alongside it, EIP-8037 reprices gas against permanent state growth, the counterweight to the jump in Sepolia block capacity that shipped with the same Ethereum upgrade.
No Glamsterdam Date Exists for Hoodi or Mainnet
No activation date exists for either network. “Hoodi and mainnet activation dates have not yet been decided,” the announcement says, adding that both “will be announced once decided by client teams.” No date for either network has been published since.
Dates circulating elsewhere deserve care, because the schedule for this Ethereum upgrade has already moved once. Cryptoticker reported on 23 August that “Sepolia forks on September 28, 2026 at 14:44:48 UTC,” a slot that came and went eight days before the fork actually ran, and the same piece gave a 26 October Hoodi date the Foundation has not confirmed.
What the Ethereum Upgrade Asks of Stakers
The instruction is unglamorous. Node operators have to “update both their execution and consensus layer clients before activation,” and the Foundation adds a line aimed squarely at stakers, telling them to make sure “both your beacon node and validator client are updated.” Running one without the other is the failure mode this Ethereum upgrade will expose fastest.
The entry queue outweighs the exit queue by 573,097 ETH. Source: validatorqueue.com · Chart: FinanceFeedsStaking flows have not turned against the network while the Ethereum upgrade has worked through its testnets. The exit queue held 843,456 ETH on 6 October against 786,275 ETH the day before, per validatorqueue.com, with a wait of 14 days and 15 hours. The entry queue sits at 1,416,553 ETH, still 573,097 ETH larger than the exit side, after easing from 1,457,964 ETH. Ether traded at $2,716.70 on Bitstamp at 14:53 UTC, up 0.27% on the day and 9.56% over a month, though still 8.40% down on the year after a 71% third quarter.
Investor Takeaway
Ethereum’s entry queue stood at 1,416,553 ETH against an 843,456 ETH exit queue on 6 October, leaving 573,097 ETH more capital waiting to stake than to leave.
