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Ethereum core developers emerged from a week-long interop gathering in Svalbard, Norway with four significant milestones in hand, all pointing toward a network that is hardening its near-term Glamsterdam upgrade while simultaneously laying the architectural groundwork for its successor.
The Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol cluster published its May 2026 update on Monday, authored by incoming cluster leads Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik, detailing the outcomes and signalling what the ecosystem can expect over the coming months.
🚨 ETHEREUM GLAMSTERDAM UPGRADE PUSHED TO Q3 2026
The Ethereum Foundation has set a 200M gas limit floor for Glamsterdam, up from the current 60M.
That means Ethereum L1 capacity is preparing to increase by more than 300%.
🔹 200M gas limit
🔹 Lower ETH transfer gas
🔹 ePBS… https://t.co/Duc9CRaVLO pic.twitter.com/0QB84hgtCj— BMNR Bullz (@BMNRBullz) May 12, 2026
The most consequential output from Svalbard was developer consensus around a 200 million gas limit as a credible post-Glamsterdam target. That figure does not arrive from a single change but from the convergence of three distinct lines of work. Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation, known as ePBS, separates the roles of block proposers and block builders at the protocol level, reducing the computational pressure on validators and making higher gas ceilings structurally safe.
Block auction limit optimizations provide a complementary reduction in overhead. EIP-8037, which reprices state access operations using a fixed cost per state byte model, was finalized during the week with full repricing numbers delivered on bal-devnet-6 by Friday.
These changes make 200 million gas per block a floor rather than an aspiration. The network shipped Fusaka to mainnet in December 2025, which introduced PeerDAS and began raising the gas limit on the path toward this level.
Work on Hegotá, the upgrade that follows Glamsterdam on the roadmap, moved from theoretical to operational during the interop. Fork-Choice enforced Inclusion Lists, known as FOCIL, are now running in functional prototypes across teams. FOCIL is designed to prevent transaction censorship by requiring validators to include specific transactions in blocks, a mechanism that strengthens Ethereum’s credible neutrality at the base layer.
It is confirmed as the headline feature on the consensus layer side of Hegotá. Native account abstraction requirements were scoped in parallel. The immediate next step is a multi-client devnet for Hegotá, which would mark the shift from prototype to cross-team coordination.
The Svalbard gathering also marked the beginning of a formal leadership transition for the Protocol cluster. Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot are departing the Ethereum Foundation, and Alex Stokes will take a sabbatical.
The three incoming leads, Will Corcoran, who has worked across zkVM proving and post-quantum consensus; Kev Wedderburn, who leads the zkEVM team; and Fredrik, who heads Protocol Security and the Trillion Dollar Security project, were present at the interop and held strategic sessions with the outgoing team during the week. The stated immediate focus is shipping Glamsterdam, continuing Hegotá preparations, and advancing the Strawmap.
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