The Ethereum Foundation this week finalized a new gas limit floor and an accompanying improvement proposal for the upcoming 'Glamsterdam' network upgrade, scheduled for Q3 2026. The move sets a minimum block gas limit and introduces a mechanism to adjust it dynamically, a step the foundation says will improve transaction throughput and fee predictability. It's the latest attempt to tackle congestion on the mainnet without a hard fork to the consensus layer.
What the gas limit floor does
Under current rules, Ethereum's gas limit is set by miners (or validators post-merge) via a simple majority vote, but that system has led to a wide variance — sometimes swings of 5 million gas in a single day. The new floor creates a hard lower bound for the block gas limit, currently pegged at 30 million gas per block. The improvement proposal also adds a 'gas limit multiplier' that gradually ratchets up the cap in response to sustained demand, but only above that floor. The foundation expects this to smooth out spikes in block space availability.
Why Glamsterdam matters
The Glamsterdam upgrade is the first major network change since the 'Dencun' upgrade earlier this year. While Dencun focused on scaling Layer 2 data blobs, Glamsterdam targets Layer 1 gas mechanics directly. The new proposal is formally part of the upgrade's 'execution layer' changes, not the consensus layer, so it won't affect staking or finality. But it could make mainnet more usable for smaller transactions — a sore point for DeFi users who've complained about fees during mempool congestion.
Timeline and next steps
The foundation has set a mainnet activation window for September 2026, pending final testing on the Sepolia and Holesky testnets. Developers are expected to publish the full spec for the gas limit changes by early June. The 'Glamsterdam' name itself is a placeholder — the Ethereum community traditionally names upgrades after conference venues, and this one follows the Ethereum Meetup in Amsterdam last month. No client releases have shipped yet, but Geth and Nethermind teams are already integrating the spec.
One unresolved question: whether the 30 million gas floor might need to be higher by launch. The foundation says it will review network conditions in August before locking the final number. If Layer 2 usage continues to grow, the floor may not matter as much — but for now, it's the biggest concrete change coming to Ethereum's base layer this year.
