Ethereum's Sepolia testnet activated the Glamsterdam upgrade on October 6, lifting its block gas limit to nearly 200 million, more than three times mainnet's 60 million. Blocks sampled on the network used only 24% to 43% of that new room, and no date has been set for a mainnet rollout.
Ethereum's Sepolia test network began producing blocks with a gas limit of nearly 200 million on October 6, more than three times the 60 million that Ethereum's mainnet currently allows. Gas measures the computing work a block can hold, so a higher limit gives the network more room before fees rise.
Sepolia activates Glamsterdam
The activation landed at epoch 353,024, a 6.4-minute marker in Ethereum's calendar that began at 13:53:36 UTC. The 200 million figure was scheduled in a commit tied to that epoch. A snapshot of 25 consecutive blocks on Etherscan, taken October 8, showed gas use running between 24% and 43% of the new limit — numbers 11,872,013 through 11,872,037.
A bigger ceiling does not triple transaction throughput on its own; it only means a block can hold more when demand shows up. For everyday users, that headroom is what keeps fees from spiking when many people transact at once.
Validators carry the cost
Bigger blocks are harder on validators, the computers that stake ETH to check and confirm each block. Ethereum Foundation researchers had warned that limits above 40 million could, according to Decrypt, "fail to propagate as expected" across the network, so the ceiling has crept up in small steps. A February 2025 validator vote, decided 52% to 48%, moved the limit from 30 million to 32 million. It was later raised to 60 million during 2025, and the Fusaka upgrade, live since December 3, 2025, made that figure the default.
What comes next
Two changes on Ethereum's roadmap are meant to help the network handle the extra load: block-level access lists, which record which accounts and data each block touches, and enshrined proposer-builder separation, which would move the auction that decides who assembles each block into Ethereum's own rules rather than outside middleware.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sketched the longer arc in July, describing a plan to replace almost every major piece of the protocol over three to four years. Glamsterdam is the nearer-term step, and developers describe a possible gas-limit increase toward roughly 200 million after it. The announcement sets no date for the Hoodi testnet and schedules no mainnet upgrade, so Ethereum's main network keeps its 60 million gas limit for now.
Source: Decrypt
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