Ethereum Foundation Raises Gas Limit to 200 Million... "Completely Outpaces Solana's Pursuit"

▲ Ethereum (ETH)

The Ethereum Foundation has officially accelerated Glamsterdam, its next-generation core upgrade, and reorganized its development leadership, embarking on securing groundbreaking scalability for the network.

According to a report by FXStreet, a virtual asset specialized media outlet, on May 12 (local time), the Ethereum Foundation revealed the results of a developer meeting held in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, announcing technical progress for its next-generation upgrade, Glamsterdam, along with a new leadership structure to lead the protocol cluster. This upgrade primarily focuses on raising Ethereum (ETH)'s gas limit floor to 200 million transactions, significantly expanding network processing capacity. To maximize development efficiency, the Foundation has reorganized its structure and appointed Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as new protocol cluster leaders.

The new leadership structure is a response to the retirement of existing key personnel Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot, and Alex Stokes' sabbatical leave. Corcoran will be responsible for zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) proofs and quantum-resistant consensus coordination, Wedderburn will lead zkEVM development, and Fredrik will spearhead protocol security and the establishment of large-scale security systems. This personnel reshuffle is a strategic choice to ensure the smooth execution of the long-term roadmap, encompassing the Hegotá upgrade scheduled after Glamsterdam.

From a technical perspective, the external proposer-builder separation (ePBS) technology has successfully run stably on multi-client development networks. Furthermore, the final draft of EIP-8037, a state data recalculation model, has been completed, laying the groundwork for managing data growth at approximately 60 GiB per year. The Foundation expressed confidence, stating, "Through the implementation of Glamsterdam, we have secured a reliable path to increase the throughput of the Ethereum base layer while preserving decentralized values." The increase in the gas limit is expected to contribute to alleviating network congestion and stabilizing fees.

Simultaneously with this announcement, it was also confirmed that the Ethereum Foundation unstaked 21,271 ETH, worth approximately $49.6 million, for operational funding and portfolio rebalancing. This was recorded as the largest single transaction in the first half of 2026. Experts view this as part of the Foundation's usual asset management to secure necessary research and development costs and ecosystem support funds during the process of enhancing technical maturity. Institutional investors appear to place greater significance on the performance improvements that the Glamsterdam upgrade will bring to the network rather than the Foundation's fund movements.

Through the Glamsterdam upgrade, Ethereum plans to solidify its position as a core infrastructure of the global digital economy, moving beyond a mere payment network. The execution capability secured through the leadership reorganization is expected to lead to enhanced account abstraction and censorship resistance features, which will be addressed in the subsequent Hegotá upgrade. Developers and market participants worldwide are closely watching how Glamsterdam, aiming for activation in Q3 2026, will change the landscape of the Ethereum ecosystem. The Ethereum Foundation is simultaneously achieving technological innovation and organizational stability, accelerating the implementation of its roadmap.

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