Ethereum core developers published their ninth development checkpoint on April 10, 2026, laying out the current state of the Glamsterdam upgrade and the early planning work underway for the subsequent release.

Mainnet deployment of Glamsterdam in the second quarter of 2026 is considered unlikely by developers. The first generalized devnet is scheduled for mid-April, opening an iterative testing process that will determine the eventual launch timeline.

The upgrade carries two headline features. The first is Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS, EIP-7732), which developers describe as the most technically complex piece of work in the release. Today, validators on Ethereum outsource the task of assembling profitable blocks to specialist firms called builders, using a system called MEV-Boost that operates entirely outside the core protocol. ePBS would move this relationship on-chain, creating formal auction rules governed by the protocol itself rather than private agreements. The second headline feature is Block-level Access Lists (BALs, EIP-7928), which changes how Ethereum's execution environment accounts for which parts of network state a transaction touches. That accounting change is a key enabler of processing multiple transactions in parallel, a potential throughput gain.

ePBS comes with a documented trade-off. A January 2026 paper published on arXiv (2601.12989) found that while the mechanism reduces validator-side concentration and distributes responsibilities more evenly between validators and builders, it concentrates profit among builders. The paper measured the Gini coefficient for builder profits at 0.1749 under the current system and 0.8358 under ePBS, a steep increase driven by advantages in private order flow and maximal extractable value (MEV, the profit available from reordering transactions within a block). A Coin Gabbar analysis of the research summarized the concern this way: "The locus of risk may move from validator set composition to the competitiveness and diversity of the builder market, with MEV and private order flow as primary drivers."

Two additional features are confirmed for Glamsterdam. EIP-8007 packages several gas repricing changes (gas refers to the unit of computational work measured on Ethereum) that are projected to reduce fees by approximately 78% while clearing the path for higher gas limits. The current block gas limit sits at 60 million, which serves as Glamsterdam's baseline starting point for testing at progressively higher limits. The Ethereum Foundation stated in its February 2026 Protocol Priorities Update that it aims to push the limit "toward and beyond" 100 million.

EIP-7954 raises the maximum size of a smart contract from 24 kilobytes to 32 kilobytes, a change prioritized because developers have been hitting the existing ceiling in production applications. One feature that did not make the cut for Glamsterdam is account abstraction, formally named Frame transactions (EIP-8141), which was downgraded from scheduled to considered status after client teams failed to reach implementation consensus.

The upgrade after Glamsterdam, called Hegotá, has confirmed its consensus-layer centerpiece: FOCIL, or Fork-Choice Enforced Inclusion Lists (EIP-7805). For each block slot, the mechanism assigns a pseudorandom committee of 16 validators to independently scan the public mempool and submit lists of transactions that must be included. Block proposers are required to satisfy those lists, and other validators only attest to blocks that comply. Vitalik Buterin endorsed FOCIL at the February 19, 2026 All Core Devs meeting. The EIP specification states that the mechanism provides "a robust mechanism to preserve Ethereum's censorship resistance properties by guaranteeing timely transaction inclusion… enabling multiple validators to ensure that any transaction valid under protocol rules is included in blocks."

For users outside Western markets, these roadmap items carry practical weight. India ranks first in the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Nigeria ranks second, with Ethiopia, Kenya, and Ghana also in the top 20. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded more than $205 billion in on-chain volume in the year ending June 2025, a 52% increase year over year, with stablecoin usage growing 180%. South Asia logged roughly $300 billion in transaction volume in the first seven months of 2025, up 80%. These users transact primarily on Layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism, where fees already sit between $0.001 and $0.05. Gas repricing and higher base-layer capacity reduce the congestion spikes that periodically push even those low fees higher. The Celo L2 migration illustrates the direct connection: Celo became the top Layer-2 by daily active users and surpassed Tron as the leading transport for USDT, driven by exactly the kind of protocol-level fee reductions Glamsterdam is designed to extend. The contract size increase benefits developers building complex fintech and remittance applications, a category where Nigeria ranks first globally in DeFi value received and India places among the top two Web3 developer hubs worldwide.

FOCIL's censorship resistance design matters in jurisdictions where financial surveillance is a real operating condition, including parts of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where crypto regulations remain evolving or restrictive. Under the mechanism, no single actor can suppress transactions if the broader validator set enforces inclusion.

As of April 10, ETH trades between roughly $2,130 and $2,190, with approximately 35.86 million ETH staked across roughly 1.1 million active validators at a yield of about 3.3%.

The checkpoint covering January 21 through April 9 included 10 execution-layer developer calls, 4 consensus-layer calls, and 6 experience-focused calls. Proposals for non-headline features in Hegotá opened on April 9. The Ethereum Foundation's Protocol Support team also published a new EIP Champions Handbook to formalize the process for community members seeking to shepherd proposals through upgrade cycles. The handbook builds on a structured deadline process for feature selection introduced by All Core Devs facilitator Tim Beiko in late 2025, a reform that produced a substantially larger and more organized pipeline of proposals than previous upgrade cycles had seen.