Ethereum developers have pushed the long-awaited Glamsterdam fork into its final phase. The upgrade, designed to improve Layer 1 scalability and transaction transparency, is now undergoing last-stage testing before a mainnet activation later this year. If it ships as planned, it could fundamentally change how miners and validators extract value from blocks.
Scalability and transparency upgrades
Glamsterdam targets the core of Ethereum's Layer 1 performance. It introduces changes that let the network handle more transactions per second without relying on Layer 2 rollups. The devs also baked in new transparency features — the exact mechanics aren't public yet, but the goal is to make block contents more auditable. That's a direct response to years of complaints about opaque block construction and hidden order flow.
A new MEV playing field
The fork is expected to shake up the MEV (miner extractable value) landscape. Right now, a handful of sophisticated actors capture most of the value from reordering transactions — often through private relays and exclusive order flow. Glamsterdam's redesign of how blocks are built could level that playing field. The developers say it will make competitive block construction more open, though they haven't detailed exactly which mechanisms will change. That ambiguity is making some MEV searchers nervous, while others are already rewriting their bots.
This final phase means the code is feature-frozen. The core team is now running extended testnet simulations, looking for edge cases that could break consensus. No specific mainnet date has been locked in, but sources familiar with the process expect a late-Q3 activation. The big unresolved question: whether any major MEV players will try to delay or fork the changes. For now, the devs are moving ahead.
