The upgrade is shaping up to be one of Ethereum’s most ambitious since the network’s transition to proof-of-stake in 2022. Jayanthi described Glamsterdam as “probably the biggest fork we’ve had since the merger,” adding that it will “change a lot of assumptions about Ethereum and set us up for a lot more in the future.”
Among the overall features are enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS), formally tracked as EIP-7732, and Block-level Access Lists (EIP-7928).
ePBS would bring into Ethereum’s core protocol a separation between the entities that build transaction blocks and those that propose them. Today, this process relies heavily on offchain, where there are additional trust assumptions and centralization concerns. By moving the mechanism on-chain, developers hope to reduce the opportunities for manipulation related to maximum extractable value, or MEV.
Another major proposal, Block-level Access Lists, would allow blocks to declare in advance which accounts and smart contract data they intend to access. The change will allow Ethereum clients to preload information more efficiently, helping to make block execution faster, more predictable, and easier to optimize.
In addition to these overall proposals, Glamsterdam also includes a sweeping set of gas prices that could significantly change the economics of using Ethereum.
“This will greatly change the cost of actions on Ethereum. High-level computation will become cheaper and the state will become more expensive.”
