Ethereum Foundation Delays Glamsterdam Upgrade to Q3 2026 and Raises Gas Limit Floor to 200 Million

The Ethereum Foundation has previously made several adjustments to the Glamsterdam timeline, and this delay continues its cautious strategy following the Dencun upgrade, focusing on structural improvements to the gas limit to prepare for subsequent EVM enhancements, Layer 2 expansions, and state cleaning.

On the capital path, the foundation is shifting development resources from an aggressive timeline to a capacity-first approach, motivated by the desire to avoid a repeat of historically high gas fee congestion, while providing a more stable gas economic environment for institutional DeFi, RWA, and Rollup projects to attract long-term capital to the mainnet ecosystem.

Similar to the gas mechanism optimizations before the Prague/Electra upgrades, Ethereum is currently in a controlled phase of transitioning from capacity bottlenecks to a high-throughput scalable network, with the 200 million gas floor marking a significant leap in the network's foundational capacity.

Essentially, this represents a restructuring of the industry chain: Ethereum's gas capacity is shifting from scarcity constraints to scaled supply, with the mechanism of a higher gas limit directly enhancing single-block processing capabilities, reducing pressure on Layer 2 dependencies, while shifting transaction pricing power from intense gas auctions to a predictable high-capacity environment, accelerating the concentration of capital from short-term fee competition to long-term infrastructure applications.

ABAB News · Cognitive Law

The upgrade delay is not about slowing down, but about ensuring sufficient capacity before starting.
The higher the gas limit, the more the network is liberated from "congestion taxes"; pricing power shifts from scarcity to scale.
When the mainnet capacity doubles, Ethereum will truly transition from "expensive yet stable" to "capable and strong."